LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

f Ti , 

Chap.. „...'.. Copyright No. 



Shelf. 






UNSTED STATES OF AMERICA. 



THE 



NEW DEMOCRACY. 



A Handbook for Democratic Speakers 
and Workers. 



An Outline of the Methods of the National Volunteers of 

Democracy and of the Volunteer 

Speakers Bureau, 



BY 
WALTER' VROOMAN. 



Price : Cloth, 75 cents ; Paper, 25 cents. 






&r 



Copyrigh 
By WALTER VROOMAN, 

Wainwright Building, 
ST. LOUIS, MO. 



Witt Printing Co. 



THE NEW DEMOCRACY. 



PREFACE. 



Upon the close of the 1896 national campaign, 
it was decided at an informal conference of sev- 
eral of the leaders of the Democratic party, to es- 
tablish a bureau of speakers for the continuous 
propaganda of Democratic principles by new and 
young men, while the acknowledged leaders of 
the party were busy in the Senate and House of 
Representatives. In December, 1896, head- 
quarters were opened at St. Louis. 

Several hundred speakers soon became at- 
tached to this bureau, and it was decided to form 
a permanent organization, that would bring to- 
gether not only the speakers but all the workers 
of the party. The outcome of this has been the 
organization of the National Volunteers of 
Democracy, with the Speakers' Bureau and Train- 



4 THE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

ing School as a special department. Each 
volunteer is expected to assist in forming regular 
Democratic clubs, except where for special rea- 
sons it is found advisable to organize Silver or 
Populist clubs, and also to build up and 
strengthen clubs now in existence. 

Heretofore, the handbooks for Democratic 
speakers and workers, have been so stuffed with 
statistics and figures as to burden and confuse 
the minds of their readers, consequently there is 
a demand for something simpler, for something 
that will give a bird's eye view of the political 
situation, with suggestions as to best methods of 
work and speech. 

It is to supply such a handbook to Democratic 
speakers and workers, and to outline the plans 
of the Democratic Volunteers, that this little book 
has been written. 

St. Louis, Mo., June i, 1897. 



CHAPTER I. 
INTRODUCTORY. 

The New Democracy is the Old Democracy. 
It is likewise the only Democracy, and in July, 
1896, after years of suppression, it became the 
Regular Democracy. 

The Democracy taught by Jefferson and Jack- 
son is the Democracy of Bryan, Stone and the 
Chicago platform. But the victory at Chicago of 
true Democracy over the counterfeit that for 
years fraudulently used its name was not how- 
ever a finality; it was a beginning, and what 
was there accomplished nationally is yet to be 
accomplished locally in many states and cities. 
We have not only to push on to new and local 
victories after taking the central citadel, but what 
is of greater importance, must hold the positions 
already taken. 

It was said that at the Chicago Convention we 
not only "raised the dead" but "cast out devils." 



6 THE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

We must remember, however, that there are other 
devils, which in many places still possess the party 
locally, and the miracle of casting them out can 
only be performed by the power that comes of 
unselfish patriotism. 

It is noble to fight for a righteous cause, but it 
is glorious to WIN in a righteous fight. The ex- 
posure of Republican lies, the betrayal of their 
every promise made prior to the last general elec- 
tion, the perfidy back of their pre-election 
threats, have made Democratic victory reason- 
ably certain in 1900. When the country has been 
cursed four years more by the infamous gold 
standard and monopoly rule, the majority of the 
people will favor a radical change. WE CAN 
BE DEFEATED ONLY IN ONE WAY. Let 
us repeat this. There is but one possible way by 
which the producing classes can be defeated at the 
polls in 1900; that is by the same old trick 
used by tyrants in all ages, the placing of their 
own lieutenants as the leaders of the people. 

The plutocrats fully appreciate this. They 
know that the people, weary of Republican mis- 
rule, will vote another party into power, hence 



INTRODUCTORY. 7 

their only salvation is to guide and control. 
They can do this in but one way, by having the 
opposing army officered by generals of their own 
choosing. It makes no difference how big the 
army, if the enemy chooses its officers, it is 
doomed. 

This was the trick by which monopoly defeated 
Democracy in several states during the recent 
campaign. The forces of the people were hastily 
organized. The recruits were strangers to one 
another. By a bold move on the part of pluto- 
cracy, backed by ample corruption funds, the wil- 
ling tools of the money power were in many 
places made leaders of the very army formed to 
destroy the money power. As a consequence, 
we, the people, CAST the votes, while in many 
places the gold standard representatives of the 
Republican and Democratic parties COUNTED 
them ; and incidentally failed to count MANY. 

In 1900 the people may poll any number of 
votes, but, if we fail to stamp out such traitors as 
David Bennett Hill, Calvin S. Brice, Wm. C. 
Whitney and John G. Carlisle, who use the 
Democratic name only to defeat Democratic 



8 TEE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

principles, and who claim friendship for the poor 
man only to add his product to the fortunes of 
the rich; unless we expel these conspirators and 
hypocrites from the Democratic party, with all 
their abbettors and partners in fraud, we will be 
defeated in spite of our overwhelming advantage 
in numbers. 

Democracy now means the people against the 
organized money power. It is simply insanity for 
us to prepare for battle and select as drill masters, 
men whose salaries are paid by the very money 
power against which we fight. 

Suppose a million American soldier boys were 
to march with flying flags and beating drums, 
against an invading army of Cossacks and Turks, 
and that by some trick the wily Czar and Sultan 
should secure the appointment of Russian and 
Turkish officers over our troops. Should we be 
surprised if thousands of our brave boys were led 
headlong into ditches and slaughtered like rats in 
a trap and our magnificent army cut in pieces 
by half as many European king worshippers? 

We should not be surprised. And no man 



INTRODUCTORY. 9 

who knows anything about war could have been 
surprised when such fate befell the magnifi- 
cent army of raw recruits led last year by Bryan 
against the invasion of the European moneyed 
despots. We were cut to pieces, ambushed, 
scattered and defeated solely by the treachery of 
subordinate leaders whom our great cham- 
pion and the people trusted, who, by sympathies, 
self-interest and custom, were bound to the very 
money power that we were fighting to overthrow. 
And now the very men who sold out the people, 
who defeated the cause of American independence 
and fastened upon our nation the rule of the 
European money power for four more years — 
these same men, led by that adept in low cunning, 
that master of political knavery and arch enemy of 
popular rights, David Bennett Hill, are trying to 
get a foothold again in the party they have just 
defeated, are again trying to gain the confidence 
of the millions whose liberties they sold, and 
whose children they are now trying to betray into 
perpetual slavery. 

Some may say that it is impossible for these 
conspirators ever again to get a hold on 



10 TEE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

the Democratic party. Such over-confidence is 
always a fatal weakness in war. When we 
know that the only possible way for plutocracy to 
continue to rule our country is by corrupting the 
Democratic party and placing its own agents in 
Democracy's counsels, and that the united money 
power of the world, will during the next four 
years (aided by the best talent that can be bought 
by unlimited funds), attempt to man Democracy's 
army with plutocracy's hirelings. Our business 
is not to lull ourselves into a false belief of se- 
curity, but to work by day and watch by night to 
defeat the enemy. It is not for us to proudly 
boast that there is no danger, for there is danger, 
GRAVE DANGER, SOLEMN AND AWFUL 
DANGER, THAT WITH AN UNLIMITED 
USE OF MONEY AND THE PURCHASE 
OF THE BEST POLITICAL GENIUS AND 
CUNNING OF OUR COUNTRY BY MON- 
OPOLY, WE MAY AGAIN BE BETRAYED 
ON THE EVE OF BATTLE. 

When the outcome of our struggle is a world 
to be gained or lost, civilization to go forward or 



INTRODUCTORY. 11 

be derailed, all that is dear to us, all that is most 
sacred in life saved to us or snatched from us, we 
cannot be too alert, too eager, or too anxious; can- 
not prepare or organize too thoroughly for the 
primaries that are to decide the leadership and 
control of Democracy in the contest of 1900. We 
should, each of us, swear in the name of God and 
man, that all the power and influence we possess 
shall be earnestly exerted from now until 1900 
in ridding our party of these parasites who are in 
it only to destroy it. We should bitterly oppose 
the selection of any man for election judge, pre- 
cinct captain, ward committeeman, city com- 
mitteeman, county committeeman, state com- 
mitteeman, national committeeman, or any other 
place of trust in our party, who Is known to be in 
sympathy with, or friendly to, the gold standard, 
or to anv one of the giant trusts now helping de- 
stroy our Republic. 

If we would destroy the trusts, we must be led 
only by known enemies of the trusts. If we 
would be victorious in this conflict against pluto- 
cracy, we must follow only leaders whose records 



!2 TEE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

prove clearly that they are absolutely free from 
entangling alliances with plutocracy. 

Some say we must harmonize all elements. 
We cannot harmonize the interests of the man 
who steals and the man who is stolen from, 
any more than we can harmonize fire and water. 
We only weaken our cause by trying to get the 
men against whom we are fighting to join us. 

Some one exclaims we must have the gold 
Democrats with us, or we are lost. THERE 
CAN BE NO SUCH THING AS A GOLD 
DEMOCRAT. The Democratic party stands 
for the abolition of the gold standard and every 
other monopoly by means of which schem- 
ing monopolies rob the public. A gold Demo- 
crat is as much an impossibility as a round 
square, white lamp-black or a red-hot icicle. 
The plutocrats who left the Democratic party 
and enlisted under the banner of Mark Hanna, 
will never join us except for the purpose of de- 
feating our plans. They will never work for the 
success of the Democratic banner, unless they 
themselves carry that banner, and lead us, its 
followers, into their own traps, wherein we 



INTRODUCTORY. 13 

shall be despoiled. For the vote of every traitor 
and deserter, gained by such cowardly attempts 
at compromise, we shall lose a hundred loyal 
votes through sheer despair. 

We do not need the gold bugs. If they are 
honest in their professed change of heart, they 
will vote for honest, fearless candidates as well as 
for those of the milk and water brand, or who 
have no definite programme except their secret 
pledges to moneyed constituents. If they have 
not experienced a change of heart, we do not want 
them, for it is better that they remain open ene- 
mies than that they become professed friends, 
seeking an opportuity again to betray us. 

We do not object to receiving in the ranks the 
man who comes back to the Democratic party 
and says: "I deserted you, but I wish now to re- 
turn to the fold; I was a traitor during the last 
campaign, but I am willing to vote with you here- 
after." But the manhood, the self-respect, the en-> 
thusiasm of Democracy do object and register a 
vigorous protest to permitting these deserters to 
assume places of responsibility with power to sell 
the people out again. 



14 TEE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

No one objects to the gold-bugs returning 
to our fold any more than we should to the blind 
regaining their sight or to sinners desiring to 
wash away their sins, but we do object to these 
sinners returning at the price of giving our party 
organization over into their hands. 

A PERTINENT ILLUSTRATION. 

An ominous example of the methods being 
used to capture Democracy by the money power 
was afforded by the lawless militarism brought 
into play by the gold bugs at the recent municipal 
Democratic convention of St. Louis, when, their 
fraud being discovered, and legitimately defeated 
by the people at the primaries and at the conven- 
tion, they appealed to the last resort of despotism 
everywhere, the force of arms. 

For many years a clique of unscrupulous poli- 
ticians controlled St. Louis Democratic conven- 
tions. Early in the April campaign, Mr. Hugh 
Brady, for many years Chairman of the Demo- 
cratic City Central Committee, stated in an inter- 
view published in the St. Louis papers that a 
clique of "machine" politicians had "fixed the 
machine" to nominate Mr. Edwin Harrison for 



INTRODUCTORY. 15 

Mayor. The street railway managers, who last 
fail knifed Bryan and the Chicago platform, came 
to the front as Mr. Harrison's supporters. Mr. C. 
C. Maffitt, who bolted the party last fall, headed 
his delegation, and in several other wards the 
Harrison delegations were led by gold boltocrats. 
The "machine" was for Harrison, and Hugh 
Brady declared the "machine" could nominate 
any man it wanted. 

The men who supported Mr. Lee Meriwether 
for Mayor were all aggressive Bryan Democrats 
and opposed not only the gold standard, but also 
opposed street car domination in city affairs. 
They appealed from the "machine" to the people. 
They pointed out how the leading supporters of 
the "machine" candidate were gold boltocrats 
and street railway managers, who use their politi- 
cal influence to escape paying hundreds of thou- 
sands of dollars of taxes legally due the City 
Treasury. They insisted that franchises to mon- 
opolize the public's streets ought to be sold, not 
given away, to private corporations. And on this 
platform they secured enough delegates to con- 
trol the convention. 



16 TEE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

On the morning following the primary elec- 
tion, even the Republic, the organ of the "ma- 
chine," admitted that Mr. Harrison had but 134 
delegates, while the opposition had 153* 

When the delegates opposed to Mr. Harrison 
united in supporting Mr. Meriwether, it was ap- 
parent that nothing short of fraud and force could 
prevent the defeat of the machine. Accordingly, 
Mr. Ed Devoy, Chairman of the Central Com- 
mittee, called the convention to order and hur- 
riedly announced as its governing officers Messrs. 
Lutz, Barrett and Wand, the three campaign 
managers of the "machine'' candidate. 

Scarcely was the announcement made when ex- 
Governor Norman J. Colman rose and protested 
against the attempt to muzzle the convention, and 
nominated for chairman Mr. Sterling P. Bond. 
Upon Devoy's refusing to put this motion, one of 
the delegates, R. T. Brownrigg, made the motion 
which was duly seconded, and Gov. Colman 
put the question to the convention and it was 
carried by a majority of the delegates. In a sim- 

*See Republic, March 20, 1897. 



INTRODUCTORY. 17 

ilar way secretaries and sergeants-at-arms were 
elected, the convention refusing to accept the 
slate prepared by the machine. 

After the committees had been appointed and 
reported, nominations for Mayor were made, and 
on the second ballot Lee Meriwether received 155 
votes, eleven more than a majority of all the 
delegates elected, and he was accordingly de- 
clared the nominee of the Democratic party. 

Thereupon ensued a scene more worthy of Rus- 
sia than of the American Republic. Foiled in 
the attempt to carry the primaries; foiled again 
in the effort to force their own tools upon the 
convention as governing officers, the gold men 
and the street railway managers who were pres- 
ent on the floor of the convention, played their 
last card in the game to defeat the candidate 
pledged to make them pay their taxes, and 
ordered their servant, Devoy, to do by force what 
he had failed to do by fraud. A Board of Police 
Commissioners lent themselves to this shameful 
assault upon American liberty, and ordered three 
hundred armed police to drive from the hall the 
delegates opposed to Mr. Harrison, Sterling 



18 TEE IsEW DEMOCRACY. 

P. Bond, John J. Fitzwilliam and W. A. Branden- 
burger, the duly elected chairman and secre- 
taries of the convention, were brutally assaulted 
by the police. Mr. Bond was carted away to jail 
in a patrol wagon. Mr. Meriwether, who had 
been called on to address the convention after 
his nomination for Mayor, was thrown from the 
platform by two policemen, and, in company with 
a majority of the delegates, was forcibly expelled 
from the hall. 

Since the 9th of November, 1799, when Na- 
polean's grenadiers drove the French deputies 
out of their convention hall at the point of the 
bayonet, history affords no parallel to this out- 
rage by the St. Louis boltocratic politicians. 

That in claiming a convention has no right to 
elect its own presiding officers the gold boltocrats 
were utterly wrong in custom as well as equity, 
will be seen by recalling the manner in which 
last year the Chicago Convention refused to ac- 
cept Senator Hill, the National Democratic Com- 
mittee's suggestion for chairman, and instead 
elected Daniel, a silver Senator from Virginia. 

Although the St. Louis papers subsequently 



INTRODUCTORY. 19 

supported Mr. Harrison, whose nomination was 
only accomplished by the illegal use of three 
hundred police, those same papers did not hesi- 
tate to say, the morning after the convention, that 
the action of the machine was illegal and tyran- 
nical:* 

A WARNING FOR THE FUTURE. 
Might never makes right. The candidate 
whose nomination rests not upon ballots but upon 
the clubs and guns of three hundred policemen, 
cannot be the rightful nominee of Democracy, 
which means people's rule, not police r 'le. When 
appeal was made from the outrage of thu corrupt 

*Witness the following- extracts : 

Police Commissioner Bannerman in Globe-Democrat, March 22, 1897: 

"The trouble was all started by Ed. Devoy refusing to allow Bonds 
name to go before the convention as chairman. The whole thing was a 
scheme on his (Devoy's) part to split the convention. Of course it was 
wrong to send Judge Bond to the Four Courts in a patrol wagon." 

Republic editorial, March 21, 1897: 

"Committee Chairman Devoy made a mistake in surrendering the gave 
before the delegates had elected a temporary chairman. A convention 
holds within itself the right to choose its temporary officers." 

Post-Dispatch editorial, March 31, 1897: 

"The blundering began with Chairman Devoy. It was his duty to rec- 
ognize any delegate who desired to move a substitute for the committee's 
report. Devoy failed in his duty and furnished provocation for all that 
subsequently occurred." 

Post-Dispatch editorial, March 22, 1897: 

"Dr. Lutz had no right to a place on the platform until he was chosen 
temporary chairman by a vote of the convention. He had no more right 



20 THE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

political machine, the Court of Appeals decided 
that the matter was beyond its jurisdiction, that 
no Court has the power to review the action of 
the Election Commissioners, even though they 
certify to the nomination of a candidate without 
a shadow of right to such nomination. 

Had the Court consented to examine the evi- 
dence and gone into the merits of the case, it 
could not but have decided that the rightful 
nominee for Mayor was Mr. Meriwether, who 
had the affidavits of a majority of the delegates 
showing that they had supported him in the con- 
vention. 

This high-handed attempt of the gold bolto- 
crats to tyrannize over the convention resulted 
in Democracy's defeat. But despite the stinging 



than any casual visitor to himself take the vote of the convention on him- 
self as temporary chairman. The plain fact is that the whole of these 
preliminary proceedings were in every particular irregular, unparliament- 
ary and void." 

Post-Dispatch editorial, March 23, 1897: 

"The delegates who asserted their right to choose their temporary of- 
ficers v- right in doing so, and in fact onlv did their duty. 
THE RIGHT IS SACRE ." 

Globe-Democrat, March 23, 1897: 

"The attitude of Assistant Chisf Kiely is regarded as having been 
strained in the interest of the Harrison crowd and significant of the Po- 
lice Commissioners' domination In Democratic politics." 



INTRODUCTORY. 21 

rebuke administered by an outraged people, the 
machine is again endeavoring to fasten itself upon 
the Democratic party of St. Louis. 

The same tactics, and even more desperate and 
lawless ones, will be used by the gold plutocrats 
throughout our country. The people must be 
prepared to meet them. 

What are the best methods of preparation? 
It is to give some suggestions as to methods, and 
to increase, the vigilance of the patriotic Demo- 
crats and friends of humanity in whose hands it 
may fall that this little volume has been written. 



CHAPTER II. 

HOW TO BEGIN WORK. 

The immediate purpose of the Democratic Vol- 
unteers is to organize and carry en in the most 
effective way the campaign for 1900. They seek 
to build up and foster the Democracy of Jeffer- 
son, Jackson, Bryan and the Chicago platform by 
seeing, first, that the common people remain in 
control of the Democratic party; and, second, 
that the Democratic party, representing the 
common people, gets control of the country in 
1900. It is further hoped that the Volunteers 
thus organized and trained, will become a perma- 
nent force in the history of our Nation; a power 
in the guidance of the forces behind the nation's 
progress; a means of uniting the best intelligence 
of our race with that faith and deep religious pur- 
pose which permeate the common people, and of 
expediting the conscious co-operation of individ- 
uals with those giant forces that are slowly but 



24 THE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

surely destroying the old, and building up the new 
civilization. Our plan appeals principally to young 
men. Our methods are new, at least to this gen- 
eration, and as we believe that the great battle in 
which we are engaged must be led by the most 
vigorous, active and courageous amongst us, we 
depend principally upon young men for leader- 
ship and work. 

Knowing that our principles are eternal, and 
that in proclaiming them we have the support of 
the great common people of posterity, and of 
God, the Volunteers are expected to assume, upon 
all occasions, an attitude of absolute confidence. 

We are to utilize every force and every means 
that perception can discover or ingenuity devise 
for the forwarding of our movement. We are to 
proceed, not only by usual, but by unusual meth- 
ods, taking possession of resources never before 
thought of in political campaigns or religious cru- 
sades. Our principles are to be declared both 
in public and in private, and propagated method- 
ically and persistently in every existing institution, 
organization or association of men and women. 

The church is the center of activity for many. 



HOW TO BEGIN WORK. 25 

This class can be reached best by having our 
truths come to them through the channel by 
which they usually receive their opinion and 
ideals, namely, the church. There are other 
hundreds of thousands whose lives center about 
the liquor saloons. To reach these our speakers 
must go to the saloons. In many agricultural 
communities, it is customary to hold meetings in 
school houses, while in good weather, picnics, 
barbecues and all day gatherings take place in the 
woods. To these various customs our speakers 
must adapt themselves. In some sections the 
camp-meeting lasts for a week or two, in great 
tents, or in special woodland resorts, permanently 
constructed and kept for that purpose. Our Vol- 
unteers will find here opportunities for effective 
work. 

But for reasons of economy, the greater part 
of our work will be done outdoors. Plutocracy 
can afford to hire a dozen halls where one draw- 
ing speaker can be secured. Our movement has 
a dozen speakers to every hall we can afford to 
hire. We will consider first, therefore, methods 
of outdoor speaking. 



26 TEE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

OUTDOOR MEETINGS. 

The easiest, the most economical, the most 
fruitful of the Volunteer speaker's work, will con- 
sist of unadvertised outdoor meetings. There 
is probably not a city, village, or town in Amer- 
ica in which a man with a strong voice, mount- 
ing some emergency platform and calling 
out that he has something important to say, 
cannot, in a short time, attract a considerable 
crowd. If his message be direct, condensed, sin- 
cere and well delivered, he can hold the crowd in 
any except the most inclement weather. Com- 
ing as a surprise does not lessen the effect, if the 
words are well directed. People who could not 
be. induced to enter a hall to hear a lecture, people 
who, if the meeting had been advertised, would 
purposely remain away, will stop and listen to 
an outdoor speaker; they will be interested, and 
may even be converted if the truths are well 
presented. 

Of course, many passersby will listen only for 
a few minutes and proceed on their way. An out- 
door crowd is always a changing one, but this 
merely necessitates a special outdoor method of 



HOW TO BEGIN WORK. 27 

treatment. Indoors, an address is expected to be 
continuous; one point must lead up to another; 
a line of thought must be followed so as to pro- 
duce interest cumulative to the end. Outdoor 
speaking, on the other hand, must be made up of 
short, concise points, each complete in itself, so 
that rwo person can listen for a single minute 
without getting something to carry away with 
him. Anecdotes should be freely interspersed, 
but in condensed form. 

As the audience is compelled to stand, often on 
damp ground, and in chilly or excessively hot 
weather, it is necessary that outdoor speaking 
should never, under any circumstances, take upon 
itself the qualities of a pedagogical lecture. On 
the other hand, it must be made up of illustra- 
tions, word pictures, and pungent assertion of 
those fundamental truths known to be most es- 
sential. 
HOW TO ARRANGE SUCH MEETINGS. 

The speaker arrives in a strange town, having 
entered afoot, by horse, or by rail. If he have 
friends in the town, his work will, of course, be 
less difficult, and it will be comparatively easy 



28 THE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

to procure a horse and carriage (or a wagon). 

The vehicle secured, let him drive to the prin- 
cipal street, stop at the corner selected as the 
meeting-place, and, standing on the seat, let him 
announce (his voice pitched high, but not strained, 
dwelling for at least two seconds upon each word) 
that a meeting will be held in a few minutes at 
which "the people will be told how our country 
can be freed from the curse of Hannaism and 
monopoly" (or some similar striking expres- 
sion). Then proceeding to the next corner let 
him repeat the announcement, and so over the 
village, or, if it be a city, over as large a 
section as he can conveniently cover. By mak- 
ing a dozen or more of these announcements he 
can always gather about him the nucleus of an 
audience. 

If unable to secure a vehicle he may go afoot, 
carrying a chair to serve him as a speaker's plat- 
form. As efficient work can be done in this 
way as in any other. 

In addressing the five or the fifty men, women 
and boys who compose this audience, it is requi- 
site that he should begin in the same high key 



HOW TO BEGIN WORK. 29 

and the same deliberate manner and tone in 
which he made his announcements, addressing 
himself not to the few in front of him, but to the 
listeners in front of their stores half a block away. 
After speaking thus for five minutes, more or less, 
and arousing the enthusiasm and interest of dis- 
tant listeners, he should suddenly turn his eyes 
and attention from ail who are more than fifty 
feet away, and proceed in his natural tone of 
voice. Very often persons standing in front of 
stores and shops, lining the streets for two or 
three squares, when the speaker changes and 
lowers his tone and directs his remarks to his im- 
mediate audience, will come near to hear, if pos- 
sible, the completion of some interesting point. 

In large cities where there is much noise from 
street cars and wagons, this work is more labor- 
ious, and from start to finish the speech will re- 
quire all the energy the speaker possesses to keep 
his crowd together and to increase its number. 
But in smaller places, or in quieter neighborhoods 
of large places, after the first announcements, out- 
door speaking can be reduced to a very moderate 
exercise. The average man, after a month's prac- 



30 TEE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

tice, can speak outdoors two or three hours a 
day, divided into three or four speeches, without 
any great fatigue, and keep it up the year round, 
resting only upon days so rainy, stormy or bitter 
cold, that men will not, for any inducement, 
stand outdoors. 

PRE-ARRANGED APPLAUSE ONE-HALF 
OF ORATORY. 

If friends can secure the free service of a drum 
corps, a brass band, or a quartette of singers, to 
help draw the people together, the speaker's work 
will, of course, be greatly lessened, and much 
will be done toward saving the voice and ener- 
gies otherwise necessarily expended in attracting 
an audience. He will thus be enabled to concen- 
trate all his powers, convincing and teaching 
his hearers. 

But in the absence of drums or music, there is 
nothing so helpful to the speaker in getting a 
crowd and in holding it after it has congregated, 
than a little skilfully pre-arranged applause. If 
several men, helped by a dozen boys, take their 
places around the speaker, and from the start take 
off their hats and cheer lustily about every three 



HOW TO BEGIN WORK. 31 

sentences, not only does the noise attract atten- 
tion and draw listeners, but it impresses deeply 
those who are present, so that each word of 
the speaker has its effectiveness multiplied. A 
few men, starting off in this way (if the speaker is 
bright and forcible), will be joined by half the 
audience, and, in outdoor speaking, generous ap- 
plause doubles the effect of oratory. It not only 
adds weight to the speech, but it strengthens and 
cheers the speaker, stimulating him to his 
highest efficiency. It infuses new blood into his 
veins and new breath into his lungs. It quickens 
his heart beats and helps clear his voice. It at 
once establishes a rapport between the talker and 
the talked-to, and converts what might other- 
wise be a number of isolated units into a sort of 
organism, the vital principle of which is one cen- 
tral enthusiasm voiced by the speaker. 

To convince the friends of the movement of 
the necessity for loud cheering from the start by 
pre-arranged, conscious effort, is often quite diffi- 
cult, although it is important. Much tact and 
skill are required to select a dozen young men be- 
fore the meeting, and train them in a few minutes 



32 THE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

so that they will follow the cue of the man who 
is to lead the applause and cheer when he gives 
the word. 

A very important point, where young boys are 
concerned, is to stop their cheering when the 
leader stops. Unless you have a confederate of 
tact and personality there is danger that the boys, 
once started yelling, will enjoy it so hugely that 
they will keep it up in a disorderly way, and in- 
jure the meeting much more than they help it. 
But properly drilled, a dozen young boys are 
worth almost as much as a drum corps. Under 
proper leadership, they will stop instantly at the 
pre-arranged signal, and enjoy the military pre- 
cision. Ten minutues training by an experi- 
enced man will suffice to complete their educa- 
tion in this regard. 

REPETITION NECESSARY. 

The outdoor campaigner should never fear 
repetition. The average outdoor listener is not 
averse to hearing something that he has heard be- 
fore, but is averse to anything dull, statistical or 
requiring laborious mental effort. In fact, from 
the standpoint of economy, three or five ad- 



HOW TO BEGIN WORK. 33 

dresses made on the same street corner for three 
or five successive days, will accomplish much 
more for the cause than the same number of 
addresses delivered each one in a different town 
or locality. The apostle of the Xew Democracy, 
traveling from place to place, should stop at least 
two or three days in each village, even if he has 
only one speech and must repeat it over with 
variations each time. If he is resourceful and has 
a few anecdotes and illustrations for each day, it 
will pay him to stay a week in each town, as it 
takes two or three days for new hearers to be- 
come familiar with his objects, aims and attitude 
of thought. The writer has often found that 
more real, direct converts are made to the people's 
cause on the sixth or seventh day in a town, than 
during all of the previous days combined. 

Thought is like seed. Whatever be the soil, 
like all vegetable life, it must undergo three 
stages, planting, developing and fruit bearing. 
With the majority each stage of development re- 
quires a season; one speaker sows, another 
waters, and another gathers the ripe fruit. 
But a brain adjacent to an empty stomach, idle 



3i THE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

arms or a bankrupt 'business, offers a more fertile 
soil for new ideas, and there are some such minds 
in every town wherein all these processes can be 
carried on under the tutelage of one man; some 
such persons in despair at the beginning of the 
week, who can, by the close of the week, be 
brought to the light, their gloom dispelled, and a 
nobler civilization ever after clearly pictured be- 
fore their eyes, the object of their life's endeavor. 
There are many persons who, by one series of 
meetings, are actually converted from ignorant 
participants in existing injustice to active workers 
for the true state yet to be. The whole tenor and 
ideals of their lives are transformed by knowl- 
edge vitalized by faith. 

When a week's meetings are contemplated in 
country towns, experience suggests that the best 
time to start is on Monday and that the meetings 
all week should lead up to one or two grand dem- 
onstrations on Sunday, when the largest crowd 
of the week can be gotten together, and when, 
by the aid of a Scripture lesson, a prayer and a 
couple of patriotic songs, the enthusiasm can be 
carried highest. 1 

i. Special suggestions for Sunday work see chapter IX. 



HOW TO BEGIN WORK. 35 

LITERATURE THE BASIS OF THE MOVE- 
MENT. 
No outdoor meeting can fill its mission nor 
make use of half its opportunities, without the sale 
of literature, which enlarges and completes the 
points touched on by the speaker. The object of 
an outdoor speech is to interest, to stir the emo- 
tions of men, dispel their lethargy and despair, 
plant in them hope and faith, and prepare them 
to think out, read out and study out the great Na- 
tional problem. The attention of men, that is, the 
real, serious concentration of their minds upon 
great things, is so rare that when you once have 
it the opportunity should be utilized fully. 
Those who are interested by the outdoor speech 
should be urged to develop that interest into 
knowledge, conviction and action. This can only 
be done by inducing them to read some book or 
pamphlet, explaining In detail the points sug- 
gested by you and backing up your assertions by 
careful arguments. Ten pamphlets, or books, 
sold at a meeting where men's hearts have been 
opened and their prejudices melted by enthusiasm, 
are worth more to the cause than ten thousand 



36 THE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

books and circulars distributed from door to door. 
The sale of ten small ten-cent pamphlets at a 
meeting is at least half the value of the meeting. 
In this movement one chicken raised is worth 
more than a whole brood hatched; one fighting 
rooster is worth three dozen eggs. One cam- 
paigner, armed with facts and possessing conta- 
gious faith in our creed, necessarily becomes a 
permanent, creative force in the community in 
which he lives. 

Literature is one element in the production of 
such centers of power, not literature scattered 
wildly, but literature placed carefully in the hands 
of those who have been prepared by the personal 
appeal of a sincere advocate to see and under- 
stand the points enunciated. So bountiful has 
free literature become and so ocean-like is the 
flood upon political subjects, that it is difficult 
to get men to open a pamphlet on political or so- 
cial subjects when distributed to them in their 
normal condition. But first arouse them by a 
stirring address, and they will willingly study 
what otherwise they could not be induced to con- 
sider even superficially. 



BOW TO BEGIN WORK. 37 

Not only should the speaker try to sell as many 
books and pamphlets as possible at the meetings, 
but he should try to leave in every community or 
section of a great city covered by him, some 
worker who will get a stock of such literature and 
continue its sale until another impulse is given 
the movement by the visit of another Volunteer. 

ADVERTISED OUTDOOR MEETINGS. 

Very often a little coterie of enthusiasts will 
think that with* the aid of a few handbills they 
can get a great crowd of their stupefied, over- 
worked and discouraged fellow beings to give up 
their other engagements and walk to some out- 
of-the-way place or corner of the town to listen 
to their speaker. Our friendly promoters do not 
know that to the eye of the multitude the bills 
suggest only an uninteresting harangue or the 
visionary proclamations of a dreamer that in no 
way concern them. The result is that very often 
instead of a thousand greeting the speaker, all 
eager for information and ready for a change of 
heart, as anticipated, there are a ciozen or so al- 
ready familiar with his teachings and sharing his 
opinion on all important subjects and half as 



38 TEE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

many idle curiosity seekers without influence in 
the community. The speaker is discouraged and 
the ardent reformers are chilled to the bone and 
despairingly admit to each other that the citizens 
of their particular community are more perverse 
and hardened against new ideas and reforms than 
the residents of any other locality under the sun. 

If, instead of the preparation for an out-of-the- 
way meeting and the laborious provision of seats 
for people who never came, a few circulars an- 
nouncing the meeting and containing two or three 
gems of thought had been distributed and the 
speaker had mounted a wagon or box in the 
center of town as heretofore suggested, the 
meeting would probably have been a success. 

Except on occasions of great excitement, when 
men are drawn together by some celebrated or- 
ator, or on holidays, when they expect, under 
any circumstances, to leave their homes and work 
and betake themselves with their families to the 
woods and fields, it is important to hold outdoor 
meetings where an audience can be gathered 
largely from passersby. 



HOW TO BEGIN WORK. 39 

THE NEWSPAPER. 

A speaker talks to one hundred, one thousand 
or more hearers, but by proper co-operation on 
the part of the press his words are often carried 
to tens of thousands more. Where the press is 
not absolutely united for the purpose of malic- 
iously misrepresenting or suppressing the speak- 
er's words, at least half of his work consists 
in the silent appeal to auditors he never sees, 
those who read his words as reported in the 
papers. A few suggestions may, in this connec- 
tion, be found of value. 

First, have printed, typewritten, or copied by 
hand, all the essential points of your speech, 
ready to be handed to the newspaper representa- 
tive. Properly prepared manuscript, written on 
one side of the paper only, will often be published 
in full. It may be thrown into the waste basket. 
But any paper will publish more of a man's 
speech, if he has neatly prepared his manuscript 
beforehand than otherwise. 

Next, get personally acquainted with each ed- 
itor, entering into a pleasant conversation with 
him and trying to make him your personal 



40 THE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

friend. By this means a Volunteer can often use 
the press of the opposite party to propagate his 
views. The original purpose of a newspaper was 
to give news, and very often, even in these de- 
generate days, the instinct of a newspaper man 
to give news, if encouraged and stimulated a 
little, will become strong enough temporarily to 
overcome his prejudice, and possibly overcome 
his appreciation of the plate matter supplied by 
Mr. Hanna's agents free of charge. He may even 
give a column or a half-column, describing the 
meeting of the New Democracy, quoting freely 
the words of the speaker. 

In dealing with Democratic, Populist and other 
friendly papers, there is a secondary opportunity 
for useful work. It is to show the editors how 
they can force the plate matter and ready-print 
establishments to furnish news concerning the 
Democratic Volunteers to all their customers, by 
simply demanding information on that subject. 
Even request the editor to write a letter, telling 
of the intense interest of his constituents in the 
Volunteers, and urging that his ready-print mat- 
ter contain something weekly from the Volun- 



HOW TO BEGIN WORK. 41 

teer's National office. A sufficient number of 
such letters cannot fail to have the desired effect. 
Let every Volunteer aim to secure the co-opera- 
tion of a few editors, and the work is done. The 
ready-print establishments that remain stubborn 
should lose their patronage. 



CHAPTER III. 
SPEECHES AND MEETINGS. 

The Volunteers are organized, not to do the 
easy things that have been done in the past and 
are now being very satisfactorily done by others, 
but rather to do what others have left, and are 
leaving, undone. In communities where the 
New Democracy is strong and the people are al- 
ready in the habit of gathering periodically and 
during political campaigns nightly, it requires no 
organization of Volunteers to provide men to 
instruct and amuse them to their entire satisfac- 
tion. Our work is to do what others have not 
done and cannot do; to gather crowds where 
others have failed; to create interest where there 
is no interest; to make friends where we have no 
friends, and, WHERE WE ARE ALREADY 
STRONG AND DOMINANT IN A COM- 
MUNITY, TO TEACH OUR FRIENDS AND 



44 TEE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

BROTHERS TO SO SYSTEMATIZE THEIR 
EFFORTS AND ENTHUSIASM AS TO BE 
MOST USEFUL IN EDUCATING AND 
GAINING THE SUPPORT OF LESS AD- 
VANCED COMMUNITIES ELSEWHERE. 

In arranging indoor meetings, it is essential, 
in order that our work may be fruitful, to get 
out other than what is known as "the same old 
crowd." There are a few people of both parties 
in every community who are always interested 
in politics, and who attend nearly all party meet- 
ings. On such, ammunition is largely wasted. 
A speaker should never be satisfied to address a 
small crowd, the majority of whom are already 
in accord with his principles. His object should 
be to bring in new men, to get in fresh blood. 
The motto of each of us should be, "I came not 
to bring the righteous, but sinners, to repent- 
ance." 

To secure the attendance of the non-political 
class, it is, therefore, expedient, in addition to the 
regular speeches, to provide some form of enter- 
tainment, such as vocal and instrumental music, 
a dramatic rendition, or a children's performance. 



SPEECHES AND MEETINGS. 45 

When an audience is assembled particularly to 
enjoy the entertainment and incidentally from 
curiosity to see and hear the strange speaker, it is 
well for the speech to be built from materials 
furnished by the local performers. If children 
have participated, there is no happier way to be- 
gin than by telling how enjoyable were their 
songs and recitations, how thrilling the thoughts 
born of their happy faces and hearts throbbing 
with youthful hopes. The speaker might tell 
how, looking into their bright eyes, his thoughts 
turned toward the future, where he saw the ob- 
stacles against which these children will have 
to contend, the difficulties they will meet in get- 
ting started in life, the unfair advantages over 
them possessed by the children of special priv- 
ilege. By taking the children who participate as 
a text and riveting the attention of the audience 
upon them instead of considering the rights of 
men in general, he can gain at once, not only the 
attention, but the sympathy and the very hearts 
of those who listen. 

If the entertainment is a musical one, the 
speaker might begin by describing the state of 



46 THE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

mind produced by the sweet harmonies just list- 
ened to. By recalling the difference between the 
discord produced by ten men tuning their mus- 
ical instruments and the harmony resulting when 
they play the same instruments together, he has 
an illustration applicable in several ways: sug- 
gesting the harmony and orderliness of the state 
that we are righting for, the economy of concert 
in our political methods, and numerous other 
points, which, if given in a conversational way, 
will arrest the attention of even the women and 
the children. Let him then proceed with simple 
axiomatic truths that can be grasped by every 
hearer, abundantly illustrated, and the crowd will 
be induced to attend future meetings. 

There are a thousand cues given and illustra- 
tions suggested by a preliminary entertainment 
that can be made the gateway to the sympathies, 
affections and intelligence of those who listen. 
Convince the audience that the questions treated 
are neither abstract nor incomprehensible, but 
simple and tangible, and concern their personal 
welfare and the future of their families, and self- 
interest will impel them to listen to specific argu- 
ments backed by facts and figures. 



SPEECHES AND MEETINGS. 47 

The Volunteer who aspires to attract vast audi- 
ences and transplant the Hopes and thoughts that 
flourish in his own mind to the fertile soil of other 
minds, must first learn that the passion to in- 
struct, though a noble instinct, must be curbed 
ruthlessly, else instead of an orator the "would- 
be" will find himself a bore. The passion to im- 
part knowledge, like the other human passions, 
when given free rein to exercise itself unre- 
strained, defeats its own ends and at last destroys 
itself. 

How many old speakers we know who long 
ago looked forward, as hundreds of young men 
now look forward, to becoming orators, with 
power to sway the multitudes, to guide and lead 
them to higher things. But instead of orators 
we call them fossils. Instead of attracting they 
repel. They begin whenever permitted and never 
stop until so commanded. They are brought out 
and used in emergencies when no one else can 
be obtained, but never otherwise. They are com- 
mon hacks. Why is this? Not always because 
such men do not possess ability. Some of them 
have followed the world's greatest thinkers 



48 TEE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

throughout their intricate reasonings and pro- 
found solutions of life's most serious problems. 
But at the very start they conceived wrong no- 
tions concerning the function of a public 
speaker, an erroneous impression as to the utility 
and object of a speech or popular address. 

We have often noticed that superior minds 
are overlooked on popular occasions and some 
man with less capacity and knowledge, far less 
endowed with mental treasures, is called upon 
to do the honors of the occasion. Why? Be- 
cause he has the faculty of addressing himself 
directly to the listeners and of adapting himself 
to their frame of mind. 

TEN COMMANDMENTS. 

To those who would become speakers and 
avoid the mistakes that cause the majority of fail- 
ures, the following rules will be found valuable: 

1. Do not try to tell all you know at any one 
time. 

2. Do not try to appear deep, learned or 
poetical. 

3. Do not try to prove every statement you 
make. 



SPEECHES AND MEETINGS. 49 

4. Use statistics sparingly. 

5. Address yourself, not to the kind of men 
and women you would have made had you been 
the Creator, but to the actual men and women 
who have been created, who fill your halls and 
make up your audiences. 

6. Make your talk personal and apply every 
point to the wants, woes and sentiments of your 
listeners. 

7. Never regret the half hour or the hour 
occupied by the music, recitations, drama, or 
other entertainment preceding your speech. 

8. Do not manifest impatience at the time 
consumed in short talks by local speakers. 

9. Remember that generally all the good that 
it is possible for you to accomplish if your au- 
dience by preliminary exercises is brought into 
rapport and sympathy with you, can be accom- 
plished in half an hour. If you can get the com- 
plete attention of your audience for half an hour, 
they will have sufficient matter to fully occupy 
their thoughts the rest of the day and night, and 
not only this, if your talk is interesting and 
they go away hungry instead of satiated, they will 
gladly attend the next meeting. 



50 THE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

10. Be satisfied if you interest your hearers 
and be not greedy to instruct. For those really 
interested by oratory will instruct themselves by 
means of literature which is the only source of 
real instruction. Oratory should win sentiment 
and stir interest; literature, perform the work of 
education. The speech fulfils its mission if it 
persuades men to read aright. 

ENTERTAINMENT. 

A meeting that is half entertainment or if 
illustrations, anecdotes and stories be included 
under the head of entertainment, a meet- 
ing that is nine-tenths entertainment and 
one-tenth direct statement of fact and reason- 
ing therefrom, is of far more value than a 
three hours' bombardment with facts, figures, ar- 
guments and the soundest reasoning, directed by 
a master. The average human mind, as God 
made it and as our present unsocial life has un- 
made it, will become wearied by such an effort 
and leave the meeting with the firm resolve not 
to attend another. Such meetings cannot be held 
often and do not win the sympathies and co-oper- 
ation of men nearly so much as a meeting planned 



SPEECHES AND MEETINGS. SI 

and arranged on the basis of adaptation to the 
capacities of the average listener and his multi- 
form emotions and mental wants. This is the 
secret of the success of the popular churches. 
They do not try to teach the people too much. 
They do not strain that organ, very weak in the 
average human mind, known as the logical 
faculty. 

Far more progress can be made in any com- 
munity by instituting a successful series of meet- 
ings, wherein serious reasoning occupies a minor 
portion of the time, the rest filled in by entertain- 
ment, than can be gained by meetings that furnish 
a perfect mine of wealth in the way of food for 
thought and intellectual feasting for the few who 
have the power to appreciate such things. 1 

LIFE IS SHORT. 
The length of the man's speech should be 
measured, not by his own physical endurance nor 

iOf course the most effective methods of presenting our cause can only 
be hinted at in a text-book, A month or several months of personal train- 
ing- is requisite to give the student a real understanding of the difference 
etween the old method and the new. It is, therefore, urged that as many 
of the younger speakers as possible attend and take direct, personal in- 
struction from the Faculty of the Volunteers' School in St. Louis. 



52 THE NE W DEMO CJIA C Y. 

the time that his breath lasts, not by the amount 
that he has to say nor even by the capacity of his 
audience to listen or to remain in the room, but 
in every case it should be measured by the ca- 
pacity of his hearers to enjoy. 

Most political meetings are too long. Very 
often two or three speakers are engaged, each 
harboring the erroneous opinion that duty re- 
quires him to talk an hour. Now, any speaker 
who cannot say something good, useful and in- 
spiring in fifteen minutes, is incapable of saying 
anything good, useful or inspiring at all. 

Except in times of great excitement or in out- 
of-the-way country districts where meetings are 
few and the hearers, like savages in a forest, must 
gorge themselves when they have a chance, the 
speaking should never, on any occasion, last more 
than an hour and a half. 

Where there are three speakers, not only 
should each be limited to half an hour but the 
chair should be rilled by a man with pluck and 
personality sufficiently great to tap the speaker 
on the shoulder when his time is up. 
I have seen more hoggishness displayed at 



SPEECHES AND MEETINGS. b'6 

political meetings than ever at a dinner table. 
The man who sits down at a table and eats every- 
thing in sight before his friends arrive, is a gentle- 
man compared with the fellow who occupies the 
time of his colleagues at a public meeting; be- 
cause, if by one man's greed all the food on the 
table is eaten, other food can be obtained, but 
when some oratorical hog monopolizes the op- 
portunity of his fellow-speakers, he takes from 
his colleagues what can never be replaced. 

Our volunteers will accomplish a great work 
for humanity indeed if one of their number suc- 
ceeds in inventing a method to stiffen the back- 
bones of presiding officers sufficiently to enable 
them to sit down on that species of "bore" who 
push themselves to the front, ask to speak first 
by pledging to quit at a specified time and then 
talk on until the audience begins to disperse. 
Few people appreciate the great loss caused to a 
party or movement by the vacillating weakness of 
presiding officers and the greedy instincts of men 
who like to be heard and, in order to satisfy this 
instinct, "hog everything in sight." 

One mission of the volunteer speaker is to teach 



54 THE NE W DEMO CBA C Y. 

etiquette to the political speakers of our own 
party and when "Ex-Governor So-and-So" and 
"Prosecuting Attorney Other-man" and "Judge 
Dry-Bones" and "Ex-Judge Old Fogy" and "The 
Honorables" and "The Colonels" and "The 
Generals" and the bull-dozing youthful speakers 
assume to occupy time not intended for them, to 
take the chairman by the arm and stand by his 
side until he redeems the pledge made before the 
meeting and stops the mouth of the insolent fel- 
low who has not sense enough to regard the rights 
of his fellow-workers. 

AN OUNCE OF PREVENTION. 
If a prominent man, known to be long-winded 
and lacking in this one requisite of a gentleman, 
is present and it is uncertain that the presiding 
officer has the courage necessary to call him down 
at the right time, our voluble celebrity should 
be told that the position of honor being the 
last on the program, it has been POSITIVE- 
LY given to him. Thus the other speakers will 
have a chance to plant a few ideas in the minds of 
their auditors before they are hopelessly wearied. 
Although the last speaker may injure the general 



SPEECHES AND MEETINGS. 55 

effect of tEe meeting by his prolonged and drawn- 
out harangue, the self-assertive and independ- 
ent ones among the listeners can, at least, leave 
the room when they get fatigued, without missing 
the opportunity of listening to those whom they 
came to hear. This point is purposely empha- 
sized, and strong language not inadvertently used. 

Where more than one speaker participates, 
there is nothing more essential for a successful 
meeting than that each speaker be limited in time 
by a pre-arranged plan, and that each be forced 
by the presiding officer strictly to observe that 
limit. 
MORE THAN TWO MILLION MEMBERS. 

The success of the Christian Endeavor move- 
ment in the Protestant churches is due almost 
solely to their method. The Christian Endeavor 
Societies have no new message to the world; they 
advocate no reforms; they do not add anything 
to the teaching of the church; do not even take 
it back to any of those sublime truths of the past 
largely ignored and forgotten by the modern 
church. But there is one simple reform in the 
method of carrying on religious meetings to 



66 THE NE W DEMO Oil A C Y. 

which the Christian Endeavor Societies owe their 
success, and by means of which alone they have 
gained more than two million members in little 
more than a decade. This great and valuable 
secret is their system of two or three minute 
addresses, and their requiring participation in the 
meeting by every member. 

Some of us are familiar with the old time 
Protestant prayer-meetings, composed of five or 
six old men, from ten to thirty middle-aged and 
old women, with a scattering boy or girl forced to 
attend by parents. The prayers were long. The 
talks were dry. The presence of a young man or 
woman was always a surprise. 

The Christian Endeavor Society with the same 
theology, the same message, the same hymns, not 
even having a new impulse, a new moral ideal, or 
a new hope for the betterment of the world, but 
merely by requiring each member to say a few 
words and requiring that they say no more than 
a few words, has succeeded in joining together 
over two million young people into a prayer meet- 
ing society. Young people and prayer meetings! 
Always before suspicious of each other! Presto 



SPEECHES AND MEETINGS. &7 

change! Two million young people organize in 
fifteen years to attend prayer meeting. The ex- 
planation of this miracle is ENFORCED 
BREVITY. 

Short speeches, the extinction of bores, and the 
participation in each meeting in some way by 
every listener are so far as method goes the essen- 
tials for a great popular movement. 

Good manners that have been taught to most 
of the world as regards eating and drinking have 
begun to be introduced into the world of meet- 
ings, religious and political, and when we see a 
feature, a little reform of this kind, building up in 
a few years one of the largest and most formidable 
religious organizations in the way of numbers 
that the world has ever seen, the organizers and 
workers of the new Democracy should profit 
thereby and at least learn the lesson, "Don't bore 
the people." It were better that the long-winded 
talker were a Republican or that he were thrown 
into the sea than that he should be allowed to de- 
stroy our meetings by his prolonged and learned 
discourses. Flee from the long-winded man, or 
else turn on him and make him sit down when his 



58 THE NE W DEMO GBA C Y. 

time is up. Or do with him as you do with the 
man who displays swinish proclivities when you 
invite him to dinner, DON'T INVITE HIM 
AGAIN. 

THE BUREAU OF VOLUNTEER SPEAK- 
ERS. 

K community feels that it needs to be awak- 
ened, and desires to arrange a series of meetings. 1 
How can suitable speakers be had? So often a 
mistake is made. A speaker goes off on a tan- 
gent; he carries his hearers into a labyrinth of 
statistics and details, from which he cannot extri- 
cate them; he makes one "break" that alienates 
more votes than his whole speech wins, or in 
other ways proves himself incapable of accom- 
plishing good for the community that he visits. 

Heretofore such a man, by bulldozing promi- 
nent politicians into giving him letters of recom- 

iAdvertising methods: Tickets afford the best method of advertising 
meetings of all kinds. It is a personal, definite invitation, and the surest 
"crowd-gatherer." In large cities it may be necessary to issue from fifty 
thousand to one hundred thousand, and have them carefully distributed, 
in order to get out two thousand persons. In smaller places the percent- 
age of waste is not so great. Get the co-operation of the press, if poss- 
ible, but do not rely upon it. To the last moment there is always danger 
of its deserting to the money power, as the latter can bring almost irresist- 
ble pressure to bear upon it. Print on every ticket a short list of the best 
books, i. »., Lloyd's "Wealth against Commonwealth," Ely's "Socialism 
and Social Reform," "Ten Men of Money Island," "Coin's Financial- 
School," etc. 



SPEECHES AXD MEETINGS. 59 

mendation, might impose himself on one com- 
munity after another, and continue for years to 
injure the party. By proper co-operation of the 
party with the Bureau of Volunteers Speakers, 
this evil, in a large measure, can be avoided, be- 
cause this Bureau does not send a man to speak 
until it is thoroughly acquainted, not only with 
his character, but His capacities and judgment, 
and knows his method of argument and what he 
is to advocate. When young and comparatively 
inexperienced speakers are sent out, it is known 
beforehand what is to be said, as their speeches 
are prepared and rehearsed in advance. They 
must know what they have to say, and not trust 
to inspiration, which often results in perspiration 
for the speaker, and exasperation for the hearers. 
Every speaker sent out will present the great 
fundamental truths of our movement and not 
waste time in arguing details, which only supplies 
our enemies with new weapons to use against us. 
His speech beforehand has been pruned and criti- 
cised; the dead branches lopped off; the twigs and 
vines cleared from the trunk of the tree, and he is 
prepared to do only such work as will make con- 



60 THE NEW DEMOCBACY. 

verts and deepen the convictions of those already 
with us. 

There exists no other Bureau or Headquarters 
in America, through which Democratic organiza- 
tions can obtain at all times the best talent, and 
never fail to get a man who will strengthen their 
local organization. 

Again, when meetings are held regularly in a 
town and a work of systematic education is car- 
ried on, it often happens that one speaker follow- 
ing another repeats over again the same statistics, 
the same arguments and even the same stories 
heard before, thereby tiring the audience. But 
when a community is supplied regularly by the 
National Bureau, each speaker takes up a differ- 
ent phase of the great problem, recapitulating 
only the few fundamental truths on which our 
movement rests. Each presents also something 
new, bright and spicy of his own. T3y this ar- 
rangement every community can enjoy the bene- 
fits of a succession of good speakers every month 
or week during the whole four years, and escape 
the persecution of those unteachable bores, who 
think themselves speakers. The crowds at these 



SPEECHES AND MEETINGS. 61 

regular periodical meetings will increase, because 
each time they will Hear something just as good 
as the last time, with added special features, the 
result of individual genius. 

At present, when a speaker is wanted, anybody 
is invited who happens to be available, his abilities 
being measured by Els own recommendation, or 
by letters bulldozed from prominent men, who, 
for reasons of political prudence dared not offend 
so energetic a fellow. A community in this way 
may secure a good speech occasionally, but often 
the speaker is a positive injury to the cause. One 
poor speech in a series does more to lessen the 
general interest and reduce the size of the crowds 
thereafter, than can be overcome by half a dozen 
good speeches. 

Of course, where the local Democracy can se- 
cure the services of some one of our national lead- 
ers, no bureau mediation is needed, but our 
national leaders are few and the work before us 
limitless, therefore the service of the Volunteers' 
Bureau in training, equipping and guaranteeing a 
JSrgre number of new speakers who can be se- 
cured at any time, by any community, at a mod- 



«2 THE NE W DEMO CBA C Y. 

erate expense, is meeting with hearty response by 
Democratic clubs generally. 

The best way to make a strong club anywhere 
is to institute a series of meetings, all the year 
round, and, by having at least one able speaker 
each time, never to disappoint the audience. 

Let each town and village establish a lecture 
course at once, and place itself in communication 
with the Volunteers' Bureau. The more numer- 
ous and closer together such villages and towns 
are, the smaller will be the expense to each com- 
munity and the easier will it be to make up 
regular circuits for speakers. 
THE CO-OPERATION OF CONSTITU- 
ENTS NECESSARY. 

Although every speaker sent out is guaranteed 
to do effective work, the leaders of each com- 
munity are urgently requested to report to head- 
quarters at once, the success or short-comings of 
each speaker and meeting. Without such co- 
operation, the Bureau cannot keep that oversight 
of its hundreds of speakers necessary to raise the 
standard of work to the highest efficiency. It 
is assuredly the duty of local workers to give 



SPEECHES AND MEETINGS. 63 

straight-forward reports to Headquarters, of the 
short-comings and "breaks" on the part of the 
representatives of our Bureau, who represent our 
party and for whom our party is responsible as 
well as to report the benefits resulting from each 
meeting. The fact should also be emphasized that 
each representative of the Bureau receives a letter 
of recognition and instruction once a month from 
headquarters, and his standing with the Bureau 
should be judged solely by such letters or by 
direct correspondence. We must be able, when 
any speaker fails on his part to fulfill our require- 
ments, to cease our connection with, and our re- 
sponsibility for him. 



CHAPTER IV. 
METHODS OF TRAVEL. 

For those very respectable speakers of the old 
school who go to a town only when sent for and 
speak only'at meetings properly advertised and 
pre-arranged, who are blessed with a goodly 
supply of that eminently obstructive article, the 
chief burden on every popular movement, com- 
monly called dignity, there is no advice needed 
as to methods of travel. For such well regulated 
exponents of bimetallism and reform about the 
only advice that can be given is "be sure that your 
car fare is sent to you before boarding the train." 

But to another class of speakers, those who 
make up the rank and file of Democracy's Volun- 
teers, those whose purpose and power of will are 
such that no obstacles, no stumbling blocks, no 
hardships can embitter or delay, those in whom 
the fire of enthusiasm for humanity has burned 
up their dignity and who in starting out do not 
ask whether they have means to go respectably 



66 THE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

and comfortably and quickly or not, but one 
question presents itself, namely, "Can I get to my 
destination in time to deliver my message?" The 
methods used by such will be various. 

When we have the money to buy railway tickets 
and when cars go at the proper hour, we will 
travel by rail. Otherwise we will drive when we 
can conveniently secure a horse an4 vehicle, or 
we will glady mount the saddle or a wheel. But 
when car tickets, carriages, saddle horses and 
bicycles are alike impossible, the man fighting for 
principle will rise superior to his dignity and de- 
pendence upon small comforts and taking a 
bundle of literature and a small bag will, before 
starting, ask himself only, "Are my shoes good?" 

EXPERIENCE FAVORS TRAVELING 
TWO BY TWO. 

The early Christian disciples went out preach- 
ing the gospel by twos. Throughout history and 
in the experience of those living, it has been 
found that the will and intensity of purpose of the 
average man is better preserved and that he more 
easily overcomes obstacles, troubles and disap- 
pointments if in traveling among strangers he has 



METHODS OF TEAVEL. 67 

companionship. Therefore although, at times 
the Volunteers may travel as individuals, lonely 
and homesick, still, wherever it is practicable, we 
advise our speakers to travel by twos. It is much 
easier to walk five, ten, twenty, or even forty miles 
in a day, from one town to another with a com- 
panion. Not only is loneliness overcome, but 
two speaker and workers have more than twice 
the influence upon a community that either would 
exert separately. Besides it is safer, and, in case 
of sickness or accident, there is some one to go 
for help or to "tell the story." 

AFTER ENROLLING. 
Two young Volunteers start out for a month's 
campaign in the cause of American liberty. We 
have no money, the extent of our capital being a 
bundle of Democratic literature, an appointment 
from the Bureau of Volunteer Speakers and a 
good pair of shoes each. We start at seven 
o'clock in the morning from town "A." It is 
twenty miles to "B" where we wish to speak at 
night. We walk six miles by nine o'clock and 
are then overtaken by a farm wagon in which we 
are allowed to ride eight miles, when it leaves 



68 THE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

our road. We give the driver a pamphlet, thanks 
and a blessing and we part. It is now eleven 
o'clock and we walk six miles further when at 
one o'clock we reach our destination. 

In ten minutes we have found a friendly Demo- 
crat who, after looking at our letters, shakes our 
hands, takes us to his house and provides food. 
After resting a couple of hours after dinner, we 
make an out-door talk as suggested in Chapter 
three, and announce a night meeting. 

If those who profess the name Democracy in 
this village are overburdened with sham dignity 
and devotion to what is old and inefficient and 
refuse to recognize or aid the appointed speakers 
of the people's cause, we must be ready to 
rely on other resources. Our afternoon collec- 
tion may amount to ten cents or it may reach 
fifty cents or a dollar. The crowd may, however, 
refuse to contribute anything. We may sell liter- 
ature sufficient to supply our wants, or the gold 
standard and the trusts may have caused such a 
scarcity of cash that we cannot sell anything. 
We may be compelled to get our supper and may- 
be breakfast by trading a pamphlet to a grocer for 



METHODS OF TBAVEL. 69 

crackers and cheese. After speaking in the after- 
noon and evening if we should meet with no suc- 
cess or recognition, expediency would suggest 
that we shake the dust from the soles of our feet 
and proceed on our journey toward a more 
friendly community, while the oppressor prepares 
the way for the work of education later. 

In some places friends will supply car tickets; 
in others they will procure a carriage or wagon 
and deliver us to the next town. From other vil- 
lages or towns we may have to proceed as we 
started and as the apostles used to travel, walk- 
ing along the dusty road, the frozen ground or 
through mud or snow. This method of travel is 
not only now practiced by many of our speakers, 
but can and will become the method of thousands 
more. It is a thoroughly practicable and sensible 
method of teaching truth against great odds and 
adds to the force of the speakers' message by 
proving him sincere. 

That this plan of campaigning is altogether 
feasible tKe writer can personally attest from 
actual experience. Years ago, as a mere boy, I 
became intensely interested in the principles of 



70 TEE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

the New Democracy and starting without money, 
without friends or any organized assistance, im- 
pelled merely by enthusiasm for humanity and 
hatred of that tyranny through which my race 
and family had suffered, I traversed in this way 
every county in the State of Kansas, circulating 
thousands of pamphlets in which were pointed 
out the way to a nobler civilization. While still 
a boy I also walked or rode with friends through 
Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania 
and New York. I was often interfered with by 
persons disposed to disagree, but at every village 
and town and city through which I passed, I 
stood up in the open street in a carriage, on a dry- 
goods box or a chair and proclaimed my faith 
that the poor people need not suffer as they do if 
they would but unite in behalf of their own in- 
terests and use the ballot against oppression and 
tyranny. 

Very often I was without money, and I then 
discovered that my early study of hygiene could 
be turned to good account. I found that the 
great capitalists, aided by Edward Atkinson and 
the soup house reformers, in trying to devise a 



METHODS OF TBAVEL. 71 

diet for the poor that might enable them to work 
for less wages, though failing in this, had at least 
given me a pointer. I found that their bill of fare 
lacked but one ingredient to make it very endur- 
able, and that was enthusiasm and youthful hope 
and fire. L added this ingredient and was in- 
dependent of the world. 

HYGIENE AS A WAR MEASURE. 

Those Volunteers who intend not only to try 
to speak for the cause during the next four years, 
but have determined to fight for the continuation 
of our Republic in spite of all obstacles, should 
learn how independent the body really can be of 
what are usually termed the necessaries of life. 

As an invalid child I attended a course of lec- 
tures delivered by one Dr. O'Leary. This dis- 
tinguished gentleman, with the theatre stage, 
which he used as his platform covered over with 
polished skeletons, manikins, human heads in 
chloroform and colored pictures of the various 
parts of the human frame, impressed my young 
mind deeply. At that time, I remember I had 
been "given up" by my parents and the doc- 
tor, as a child who could not possibly be 



72 THE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

raised. I was accustomed to thoughts of death 
and for years constantly expected a visit from 
the dreaded monster. No memory is more dis- 
tinctly engraven on my mind than the nights 
when, with eager eyes fastened on this wonderful 
man and his mysterious skulls and manikins, my 
heart throbbing, my face aglow, I listened in rapt 
attention, that possibly I might catch some secret 
that would help me defeat death and add strength 
to my frail body sufficient to do battle with life's 
hardships. 

After describing a boy who died at about my 
own age because his nervous system had been 
deprived of the proper life-giving elements which 
had been taken from his food by modern pro- 
cesses, the Professor took up a handful of wheat 
letting it fall repeatedly through his fingers, stat- 
ing that each grain of wheat contains in it all of 
the elements required to sustain human life. He 
said that civilization, by taking away the outside, 
the most nutritious part of the wheat, had struck 
a blow at the physical development of our race. 
He declared that man can live for years on whole 
wheat requiring no other article of diet, and that 



METHODS OF TBAVEL. 73 

the outside of the wheat especially, now thrown 
aside as bran and fed to the cattle, contains the 
elements of bone and nerve fibre, that, while 
the lady who eats only the choicest white bread, 
made of the finest flour, has to substitute gold for 
parts of her teeth, the teeth of the cattle that eat 
the bran are perfect. He gave as an illustration 
the march of Caesar and his legions through Gal- 
lia, when Caesar's soldiers often for weeks at a 
time were without provisions and were compelled 
to feed on whole wheat alone which they would 
snatch in handfuls from the fields as they 
marched, thresh in the palms of their hands and 
grind with their molars. The crushing of the 
hard wheat grain gave the teeth exercise while 
the crushed bran and surface of the grain supplied 
those elements required in the construction of 
bone and teeth. "At the present time, nineteen 
centuries after," so this doctor said, "there are 
numerous skulls of these same soldiers of the 
great Caesar to be seen in the London Museum 
and as a result of their wheat mastication, every 
tooth is as sound in these skulls, as whole and free 
from decay as when heathen Rome was Mistress 
of the World and Caesar was King." 



74 TEE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

A PERSONAL EXPERIENCE. 
Whether this astounding statement of the 
learned doctor has any basis of truth or not I 
do not know, but that the lesson Re sought to 
impress by it is true, my own experience can at- 
test. During a period of several years, with an- 
other young enthusiast, I subsisted on a diet of 
bread and apples except when these could not be 
had, when we repaired the waste of our bodies by 
eating whole wheat, a bag of which we constantly 
carried with us for "emergencies." Often we 
have subsisted on whole wheat and clear water 
alone for several days, and even a week at a time. 
During these periods we did not notice that we 
lost flesh. Of course we had very little to lose, 
but our vigor and the intensity of our enthusiasm 
and faith in our powers, all of which depend 
largely upon the amount of nutriment carried 
from the stomach to the brain, and various nerve 
centers, were not in the least diminished. Later 
on we found that when convenient, we could ob- 
tain more nourishment from the wheat with less 
chewing by having it boiled, but when boiled, 
we could not carry with us a week's rations with- 



METHODS OF TBAVEL. 75 

out fatigue; and boiled wheat will become sour in 
the summer time while whole dry wheat will keep 
for years, and, like feminine beauty, remain ever 
fresh. It is the most condensed form of digest- 
ible food known to man. 

Of course where men have dissipated and 
their powers of digestion have been undermined 
by intoxicating liquor, tobacco, or the habit- 
ual use of highly spiced and over-prepared 
foods, any coming down to a natural diet like this 
is a severe hardship. But for a young man with 
firm faith and good health, NOT TO BE IM- 
PEDED IN HIS DESIRE TO BECOME AN 
ESSENTIAL FACTOR IN THE GREATEST 
MOVEMENT OF HISTORY BY THE MERE 
FACT THAT HE HAS NO MONEY WITH 
WHICH TO PAY CAR FARE AND BUY 
GOOD FOOD AND CLOTHES, the sugges- 
tions here given will be found helpful. I would 
not advise others to do, what I have not done or 
am not willing to do myself. The fact is, how- 
ever, that any young man, in good health, and 
formed of the right kind of "dust," can travel, 
without any money from one end of the country 



76 TEE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

to the other speaking daily, and accomplish much 
for our cause, even if he does not meet more than 
one true friend in a thousand miles. But the 
comforts and vices and follies of civilization he 
must be able to do without. 

This austere and ascetic mode of life is not 
commended for its own sake. The suggestion is 
merely thrown out as one possible way of begin- 
ning work, so that no young man in good health 
can claim that he would have done wonders for 
the cause had he not been prohibited by poverty. 
No such excuse exists. Healthy single men can 
live and thrive if buoyed up by hope and faith 
and manly purpose, and travel the world over on 
a quarter of the wages of a day laborer. 

NOT CIVIL BUT MILITARY. 

To those persons who may possibly criticise 
these suggestions as tending to encourage a lower 
standing of living, thereby indirectly aiding 
in the lowering of wages, I will simply say that I 
am not giving suggestions for methods of civil 
life but only military suggestions to be acted upon 
in time of war. The battle is now on. No conflict 
of the past ever appealed more strongly to the 



METHODS OF TBAVEL, 77 

sublime qualities in human nature than the pres- 
ent war of the people against the united plutocracy 
of all countries. It is therefore appropriate and 
timely to give any and all suggestions that may 
be of value to those bearing the brunt of the peo- 
ple's battle. 

Can. it be urged against the half starved Cuban 
patriots that because they have learned how to 
subsist through months on roots and berries, 
and sugar cane their habits are likely to 
lower the standard of living in Cuba? In an- 
swer the smallest boy would say that the 
Cubans eat berries this year in order to eat water- 
melons next year, that they chew slippery elm and 
sheep sorrel to-day in order to have roast beef, 
oysters and plum pudding to-morrow. They are 
now eating the food of the animals and sleeping 
in the open fields with the beasts and dying, as 
the cattle die, by order of a butcher, that their 
countrymen and their children and their chil- 
dren's children hereafter may live as free men, 
enjoving the heritage of a free Cuba and all the 
varied gifts of civilization. 

Did our forefathers of the Revolutionary War 



78 TEE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

lower the standard of living and decrease wages 
or injure the cause of labor or of trade-unionism, 
because, in fighting for country they were willing 
to go without shoes, staining with blood from 
their wounded feet the projecting icy rocks that 
gashed them as they marched against the British? 
Oh, no! Our forefathers went without shoes that 
we might have them. They went hungry and 
cold and gave up their individual comforts and 
lives, that we, their descendants and fellow- 
countrymen, might have greater comforts, in- 
creased liberties and life more abundant. 
GENERAL MARION. 
When General Francis Marion with his brave 
soldier boys was lying in at Snows Island on the 
Pedee River, North Carolina, preparing to make 
another one of his surprising and brilliant raids 
on the enemy, an officer from the British post at 
Georgetown was dispatched to visit him to treat 
for an exchange of prisoners. The blooming 
Britisher was blindfolded and carried by a circuit- 
ous route into camp. The bargain arranged, he 
accepted an invitation to dine. The meal was 
served on pieces of bark and consisted entirely of 



METHODS OF TBAVEL. 79 

roasted potatoes of which General Marion ate 
heartily, requesting his guest to profit by his 
example, repeating the old adage that "Hunger 
is the best sauce." "But surely, General, this can- 
not be your ordinary fare " said the well fed ad- 
versary. "Yes it is," replied Marion, "For 
months at a time my men have lived on roasted 
potatoes, and we are especially fortunate on this 
occasion to be able to provide a double allowance 
to set before so honorable a guest." The young 
foreigner was so overcome with admiration for 
the brave patriots fighting for their country in 
such a spirit that on his return to Georgetown 
he retired from the service, declaring his convic- 
tion that men who could with such cheerfulness, 
endure the privations of such a life, could never 
be subdued. 

The blooming Britisher was right. The God 
of William Tell, of Cromwell, of Washington and 
Marion, of Garrison and Lincoln, of Moses and 
of Bryan, never has and never will permit such 
enthusiasm and faith and patriotism to go unre- 
warded. Men with purpose so intense, whose 
flame of patriotism burns so brightly as to con- 



80 TEE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

sume their love of comfort and dependence upon 
external things, can never be subdued by hired 
Hessians nor the combined forces of opulence, 
ease and greed. 

Going out in such a spirit, demanding three full 
square meals each day for every human being 
born into the world, yet to obtain this end willing 
ourselves to live like Marion's band on roasted 
potatoes, like the Cuban patriots on sugar cane 
and berries, or on graham bread and apples, or 
to ease our hunger if necessary by grinding with 
our teeth dry whole wheat, we will in the name 
of God and humanity take this country and rescue 
our world from those who now make of it a living 
hell. 

This unconquerable, independent spirit that 
rises above physical conditions, social limitations, 
comforts and luxuries, is and always has been the 
conquering spirit of the world, always the sure 
omen of victory. 

If Marion and his band could rise superior to 
physical appetites in fighting for thirteen little 
colonies away off from the great centers of civil- 
ization; if the followers of Gomez and the im- 



METHODS OF TBAVEL. 81 

mortal Maceo can march over perilous moun- 
tains and through deadly marshes, suffering con- 
tinually for want of food and drink, and for years 
swing with almost supernatural skill their deadly 
machetes against the brutal hordes of Spain, in 
order to free one little West India isle, then surely 
we, who see the brutal arm of a united world 
plutocracy striking down and destroying all that 
has been bought so dearly by Washington, 
Marion, and Lincoln, about to enslave the world's 
home and refuge of freedom for a hundred years, 
we should not be unwilling to make any sacrifice, 
take any risks, perform any drudgery. 

In defending our country we decide the des- 
tiny of the human race. We fight to make 
seventy millions of people free and eventually to 
free the world. Ours is the most sublime, the 
most terrific, the most inspiring of all historic 
struggles. 

In fighting we will take the advice and learn 

what we can from any source however humble. 
We will listen to the hygienist, the vegetarian, 

even to the soup house reformer, if their words 

will help free us from those chains of poverty 



82 THE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

that paralyze the arm of the ordinary slave and 
make Him impotent to strike back against his op- 
pressors. 

The man who, because he earns his bread by 
labor, is looked dcwn upon by the companions 
of his youth and, because of his helplessness and 
his clothes, is fenced out of respectable society, 
such a man requires condensed and highly spiced 
food. He craves wine and beer and whiskey and 
every condiment and stimulant that can raise his 
spirits, depressed by failure, disappointment 
and the slow plodding life that offers no ad- 
vancement. Continual drudgery, without oppor- 
tunity for promotion, engulfs man in a gloom 
uncheered by a ray of hope. 

The reformer, the friend of labor, the idealist, 
the true Christian believe that such victims 
should not only have the best food and drink, 
better clothes and better homes, but that they and 
their children should also have a chance to rise, 
should never be debarred from opportunities for 
advancement or for utilizing any talent or genius 
before discovered or that may hereafter be dis- 
covered, that might lift them to a plane of dis- 
tinction and honor. 



METHODS OF TBAVEL. 83 

We believe in luxury; so much so that we be- 
lieve every poor man's family should have an op- 
portunity to enjoy all those healthful and normal 
luxuries which invention and progress have, 
placed within the reach of men. But the greatest 
of all luxuries, that which is more appetizing than 
pepper or salt or cinnamon or garlic, that which 
is more stimulating than beer or whiskey or even 
champagne, and which must precede in the 
hearts of the masses the procurement of all these 
other and lesser luxuries, is that divinest gift of 
Heaven — hope. Give a man all the other luxuries 
that the world affords, and take away hope, and 
His blood thickens, his eye becomes dull, his 
color heavy and his pulse irregular. But allow 
him only dry bread in the open air and sunlight 
by a flowing brook, and give him hope, and his 
eye flashes, his heart throbs quicken, his face 
flushes, his muscles harden and all his physical 
and mental powers are ready for instant appli- 
cation. 

We, the Volunteers of the New Democracy, 
have an abundadnt supply of this stimulant more 
powerful than any liquor, more appetizing than 



84 TEE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

any condiment, more soothing than any narcotic, 
giving power and increased facility without reac- 
tion. We have hope. We have faith. We have 
purpose. We have absolute knowledge that our 
cause is just. We know that we shall win. We 
cannot be suppressed. We cannot be put down. 
The world is ours. WE ARE INVINCIBLE. 
NO RAILWAY PASSES. 

In starting out to destroy plutocracy, the first 
thing the average weakling does is to approach 
some senatorial or congressional tool of the very 
plutocracy that he thinks he is opposing, and ask 
him to beg plutocracy for a weapon to fight it 
with, free of charge. In other words, in opposing 
the trusts and monopolies, among which the rail- 
road monopoly is one of the most tyrannical and 
corrupt, he asks for a free railway pass. 

The railroad pass is the most corrupting in- 
strument in American politics to-day. It buys 
for a small price our congressmen and senators, 
our county and state committees of both the Dem- 
ocratic and Republican parties, our bosses in both 
parties, our editors, Democratic and Republican, 
our preachers, Democratic, Republican and Pro- 



METHODS OF TBAVEL. 85 

hibition, and many of our Democratic lecturers 
and speakers. Even many of our labor leaders 
make themselves impotent in this great struggle 
by accepting railroad passes. Our labor statis- 
ticians, from the National office in Washington 
to the smallest State branch, . aid in smothering 
facts and giving life to fiction in order to ride 
on railroad passes. 

Our speakers, in accepting the gage of battle 
laid down by plutocracy in the late campaign, 
must neither ask nor accept favors of our enemies. 
We must defy them. Rather than ride on rail- 
road passes we should walk. 

We should learn from that venerable Cuban 
patriot, Maximo Gomez, who, when offered a sop 
by the brutal despotism against which he was 
fighting, although it was presented to him by 
those two eminent yet despicable toadies of 
European tyranny, Messrs. Cleveland and Olney, 
refused point blank to consider their degrading 
propositions and answered: "We do not accept 
favors of Spain. We hate Spain. Our business 
is not to ask favors but to fight." 



86 THE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

DEFY THE RAILROADS. 

During the late campaign the railroad corpor- 
ations united not only to aid in continuing the 
gold standard by the use of corporation funds 
but in robbing our people of a free ballot by the 
most treasonable acts of coercion and intimida- 
tion. There is not a giant stock jobber, tax 
dodger, labor skinner or other law protected 
thief in the country who has stolen more than 
one million dollars from widows and orphans and 
other unsuspecting investors, who has not been 
aided and abetted in his nefarious schemes by the 
railroad corporations. There is not a single 
monopoly nor trust that preys upon legitimate 
trade and commerce but has been fostered in its 
unnatural growth by railroad discrimination. 
There has not been a single reform advocated for 
the benefit of the common people during the last 
thirty years, but has been fought bitterly by the 
railway officials. 

We cannot destroy plutocracy, we cannot 
fight the trusts, we cannot fight the gold standard 
unless we are willing to defy the railroads. 

If, during our coming Congressional campaign, 



METHODS OF TBAVEL. 87 

the railroads continue their habit of monarchical 
coercion and intimidation, depriving American 
citizens of their right to a free ballot, we must 
be sufficiently intelligent and determined to co- 
operate with the enraged and long-suffering 
people who will then be forced to declare for 
government ownership of all public highways 
thus destroying, at a single blow, this most dang- 
erous and tyrannical form of plutocratic des- 
potism. 

We cannot afford to ask for railway passes. 
If we cannot pay our fare and cannot secure a 
horse, WE MUST WALK. 

BRYAN WAGONS. 

Before describing our method of fitting up and 
sending out Bryan wagons, something should be 
said about the use of the word "Bryan," and of 
Mr. Byran's request that his name should not be 
used by clubs and organizations. 

The word Bryan no longer belongs to any one 
man. It has become the common property of all 
who love liberty. The word Bryan became the cry 
of exultation at the birth of the New Democracy. 
At this most momentous historic event of the 



88 TEE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

present century when an ideal was grasped from 
the upper realm of books, of hope, of morality 
and religion, brought down to the world of 
fact and embodied in flesh and blood; when what 
before was a dream, a philosophy, an aspiration, 
suddenly allied itself with physical agencies and 
created a political power that surprised the world, 
the one cry into which the long oppressed millions 
breathed their joy, their hope, their hate, their 
devotion to their fellows, their defiance of their 
enemies was the magic word, Bryan! Bryan! 
As this one word was repeated and cheered and 
cried aloud to express both hope and anger, 
promise and defiance, it became sacred. It 
flitted from the possession of the single human 
mite whom it had pleased God to appoint as the 
herald of the new dispensation, and became the 
common heritage of humanity. 

At the Chicago Convention one citizen lost his 
name, but the world found it and the word Bryan 
became the battle cry of all who fight for freedom 
or strive .for justice. 

As this individual citizen of Nebraska cannot 
by any act or blunder in the future, efface the 



METHOD 8 OF TBAVEL. 89 

mark that he has made upon history's scroll nor 
smother the fire of enthusiasm his eloquence has 
lighted nor imprison again in his single 
breast the wondrous truths breathed out of it that 
now fill the whole world, so neither shall he 
rob us of the one magic word, once his own, 
NOW OURS, which, wherever uttered, kindles 
lethargy and inertia into enthusiasm and fills the 
abode of gloom with the light of hope. 

The people need a key-note, a battle cry, one 
single word that expresses all they believe and 
feel and hope. We have such a word. It is 
BRYAN. We intend to keep it and utter it 
wherever and whenever it will cheer us or help 
our cause. And if again one individual citi- 
zen's modesty prompts him to interfere with our 
rights, our only answer will be: "Hands off, 
honored sir," or, in the immortal words of Penn- 
oyer of Oregon, "You tend to your business 
and we, the people, will tend to ours." 
BEST WAY TO START. 

Where one or two or three persons are willing 
to start on a trip from town to town, and, with 
the co-operation of their friends, can secure a 



90 TEE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

large covered wagon and two horses with a sup- 
ply of condensed food, we would commend this 
as the most economical and efficient method of 
campaigning as it affords not only means of 
transportation, but supplies a dwelling house to 
the occupants, and at the same time, by the 
proper application of paint to the covered wagon, 
the wagon itself and the horses may become liv- 
ing missionaries, continuous and convincing 
speeches in themselves, by their presence pro- 
testing against the continuation of existing po- 
litical barbarism. If at the top of the cover is 
painted in large letters, the words, "Bryan 
wagon," every child, every woman in the 
farthest country district, every passerby, whatever 
be his race, religion or education, will know in- 
stantly that this wagon, now passing through the 
country, is one of the army of wagons being used 
in the work preparatory to the decisive battle of 
modern times to be fought in 1900. A few well- 
chosen sentences painted on the wagon and 
American flags at the top, will make it serve as 
the best possible advertisement for meetings. 



METHODS OF TBAYEL. 



91 



MAKE YOUR ENEMIES ADVERTISE 
YOU. 

The moment this wagon arrives in town every 
gossip, every old woman, every street gamin, 
every enemy of Democracy is converted at once 
into an advertising medium for the propaganda 
of our cause. The wagon, the horses, the dried 
beef, the apples, the whole wheat, the literature 
and everything that the wagon contains become 
subjects for conversation in the village. The 
Bryan wagon is the center of interest and the 
Volunteers who live in it are objects of curiosity. 
By meeting time the people are prepared to lis- 
ten with open eyes and open mouths, drinking 
in every word of the speaker's message. 

Its work done, the wagon moves on to the next 
town but the sight of it is a powerful aid to the 
memory of every inhabitant of the village. Each 
will recall time and time again the character of 
the speakers and the words and prophecies that 
they uttered, so that when the next speaker, trav- 
eling on his shoe leather or maybe in a palace 
car wearing silk hat and patent leather shoes, 
arrives and tells the people how they can free 



92 TEE NE W DEMO CBACY. 

themselves from the money power, they will re- 
member the wagon and the men who lived and 
traveled in it and spoke from it. 

It is well to have the wagon so constructed 
that, when the time for meeting arrives, by remov- 
ing the top it can be used as a speaker's platform 
and the announcements made from the front seat 
as it is driven from corner to corner. 
FORWARD, MARCH. 
Let a thousand such wagons be started out at 
once and kept on the road for four years visiting 
every country school district every village from 
Maine to New Mexico and from Texas to Ore- 
gon, each carrying an abundant supply of litera- 
ture. 

Let every Democrat patronize the Volunteers 
liberally, purchase from each a quantity of litera- 
ture for distribution and sale and throw in a 
piece of silver as the hat is passed around. 
When possible supply them with substantial 
and well-cooked meals so that they can better 
stand their heroic diet when they find no friends. 
Start the hat agoing at once in each com- 
munity, and let the town or the county that pur- 



3IETH0DS OF TRAVEL. 93 

chases a Bryan wagon put the name of such 
county, town or village on the cover. Let 
counties in Colorado, Arkansas and Texas fit out 
such wagons and start them toward the heathen 
territory of Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky and Mary- 
land. 

ABOLISH NAKEDNESS AT HOME BE- 
FORE GOING ABROAD. 
Let the money heretofore sent by our religious 
friends to teach the naked savages of foreign 
islands to be ashamed of their nakedness and to 
desire clothes, be applied now to the conversion 
of America to the conviction that every citizen 
of our own country who wants clothes should 
have a chance to earn them. If America is de- 
stroyed by that arch-devil worship, gold idolatry, 
if our Republic goes down amid the horrors of 
a violent revolution and military despotism, fol- 
lowing in the footsteps of Rome and Greece and 
Egypt, what will result from our missions in for- 
eign lands? They will become relics of the past 
because no possible teaching can then convince 
the poor heathen that our religion is a saving 
power. When the very country from which the 



94 THE NEW DEMOCEACY. 

missionaries come is the helpless victim of greed 
avarice and organized crime, how are other races 
to be tempted to follow our example? Let us 
rather turn our missionary money for the next 
four years, ALL OF IT, into the coffers of the 
New Democracy, and start our wagons toward 
the doubtful states from every Democratic and 
Populist stronghold. Let the more civilized peo- 
ple 3 of Missouri, Kansas and Nebraska, where the 
creed of progress has reached the greatest altitude 
in earth's history, share their increased physical, 
intellectual and moral development with the less 
progressive and more barbarous states that fringe 
the ocean uniting us with decaying Europe. 

Such friendly action will not only be rewarded 
by the satisfaction that always follows a righteous 
act, but the givers will be blessed of God. Noth- 
ing that a man can do, or a woman, or a child, 
will accomplish more good in this world or gain 
greater reward in the land of the hereafter, than 
the giving of their dollars and dimes and pennies 
for the starting of Bryan wagons. In this way 
the western and southern centers of thought and 
unselfish patriotism may uplift and educate those 



METHODS OF TBAVEL. 95 

states where greed, political corruption and the in- 
famies of Hannaism still hold undisputed sway. 

Let the churches of the Western states hold 
entertainments, let suppers, masked balls, ice 
cream socials, cider picnics and barbecues be held 
by the good women of every village and the pro- 
ceeds devoted to the equipment of "Bryan 
wagons." And after they are started out, each 
well provisioned with literature, blankets and 
food, and containing two good speakers and 
workers, the good women who raised the money 
to start them should continue their benign ac- 
tivities and proceed at once to raise a fund to keep 
on hand, so that when our missionaries send tid- 
ings of persecution, accident or neglect, they can 
be answered at once by a generous remittance. 

In order to insure the permanency of the ven- 
ture, and that the wagon and horses may con- 
tinue to serve the cause even if the men traveling 
with them desert their posts, a bill of sale or 
transfer of "the wagon and horses should be sent 
to our National headquarters or to our state 
officers on the day of departure. The friends of 
the organization would then be communicated 



96 THE NE W DEMO CBA C Y. 

with in advance wherever the wagon went, and in 
case either one or both the speakers tired or 
deserted, the vacancies would be filled at once 
from headquarters, and in the meantime the 
horses and wagon would be cared for. 
OUTDOOR MUSIC. 
There can be no greater aid to the success of a 
"Bryan wagon" than for the volunteers to carry 
with them and be able to play a banjo, guitar, 
violin, or small organ. Music is one of the 
world's forces and as rare music, like all rare 
things, is a very small part of the whole, 
it is not necessary that our music be of that 
sort. If we have the best arguments, we can 
afford to let the other side have the best music. 
But we must not, for this reason, give up music 
altogether. Therefore a man who is proficient in 
any musical instrument that can be played out 
doors, is a valuable acquisition to a Bryan wagon. 
But by far the most popular and most effective 
music in the world, if well rendered, is the exer- 
cise of the human voice in song. 1 To open a 

iA volume of songs, prepared for our volunteer work, and for all sorts 
of Democratic meetings, will be ready shortly, and can be obtained of 
our National Bureau or from any of our volunteers. 



METHODS OF TBAVEL. 97 

meeting with music always strikes a sympathetic 
chord with the people. It aids and strengthens 
every word that follows. If our speakers do not 
know how to sing when they start out, they 
should practice singing our songs until they do 
know. This should be part of the young speak- 
er's education. 

STEREOPTICON PICTURES. 
Another advantage of the "Bryan wagon" is 
that it can carry a certain amount of baggage the 
"shoe leather traveler" cannot possibly take with 
him. For those who do not possess an unusual 
oratorical talent, a small stereopticon or magic 
lantern with views picturing the principles of the 
New Democracy in effective colors, will prove a 
valuable aid. Reform stereopticon views have 
been produced in great variety, and the method 
of enlisting the eye wherever possible to 
strengthen the impressions made through the ear 
is sound policy. In securing collections for the 
payment of expenses, the average citizen is more 
likely to give his nickel or dime towards the sup- 
port of the travelers if he has heard a dime's 
u'orth of music or seen a dime's worth of comic 



98 THE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

and interesting pictures in addition to instruc- 
tion gotten through the medium of the speaker's 
voice. 

BICYCLES AND DEMOCRACY. 
Where a man doesn't care to walk, and where 
it is inconvenient or distasteful to travel by means 
of the "Bryan wagon," that most modern and 
popular conveyance, the bicycle, should not be 
despised as a means of disseminating truth. The 
bicycle is one of the revolutionary factors of our 
age. It is the enemy of tobacco, liquor and all 
other vices that arise from abnormal desires cre- 
ated by a sedentary life. It is the friend of 
health, strength, red cheeks and clear heads. 
Where there are good roads it is an excellent 
means of travel, and a strong wheelman can easily 
speak every night at a different town by using 
the wheel, and still have plenty of time to ad^ 
vertise each outdoor meeting. 

A bicycle, too, is an excellent companion to a 
Bryan wagon, because while the wagon is slowly 
moving from one village to another, the wheel- 
man can be scouring along the side roads dis- 
tributing small circulars to the scattered country- 



3IETH0DS OF TBAVEL. 99 

men, telling them of the meeting in the next town 
the coming day or night. In fact, one of the 
most important truths for every friend of the New 
Democracy to learn while very young, is that 
our enemy, plutocracy, utilizes every invention 
and element of civilization for the perpetuation 
of its power. In opposing plutocracy we cannot 
be narrow, prejudiced, superstitious, nor allow 
preconceived ideas as to dignity, custom, per- 
sonal appearance or respectability, to interfere 
with our free motion and our energetic conflict. 

We fight with every weapon that by any hon- 
orable means can be secured. We travel by every 
means that will emancipate us from the limita- 
tions of time, space and poverty. We accept as 
allies every friend who will aid in impressing upon 
our fellow mortals the solemnity of the oppor- 
tunity that confronts them and the malignity of 
the enemy that is destroying our common race 
and country. 

Grasp every force in earth, in sea, in air, which 
by ingenuity, wisdom, persistence, or heroism can 
be utilized in lessening human pain or adding to 
human joy; which can be of service in forwarding 



100 THE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

these grand principles that will, by one social and 
political transition, abolish the primary sources of 
human misery. 



CHAPTER V. 
SALOON MEETINGS. 

A young man, of splendid physique, of bright 
and formidable eye, the very picture of strength 
and courage, who became an admirer of Mr. 
Bryan during the late campaign, and, after care- 
ful and extensive reading forsook the Republican 
party, embraced the New Democracy and en- 
listed the week following the election as a Vol- 
unteer Speaker and worker. He is an active 
member of the Young Men's Christian Associa- 
tion and of the Christian Endeavor Society. 

The first meeting he was asked to attend was 
held over a saloon. This image of youthful 
power and courage walked through the bar-room 
of the saloon with a disparaging air, sat down at 
a table beside the writer, answered a few ques- 
tions in a gloomy and dissatisfied manner and 
said diplomatically that he had an engagement at 
another end of the city and could not remain. 
He had promised to help arrange another meet- 



102 THE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

ing a few blocks away and the next day partly 
fulfilled that promise by carrying a bundle of 
circulars from the printing office to two men 
who were to distribute them. He then suddenly 
dropped out of sight and has never, so far as the 
movement is concerned, shown up since. 

It has been learned that to a fellow churchman 
he remarked that he had been attracted by the 
high and noble ideals of Mr. Bryan, had ex- 
pected to work for the cause, but that his at- 
tendance at a meeting in a saloon was so offen- 
sive to him 'chat he lost all heart and had given 
up participation in the movement in conse- 
quence. 

This man is only the type of a considera- 
ble class who would like to have their fel- 
low beings clean but would never help wash 
them, who would dearly love to have them good 
but are too narrow to help save them; who ad- 
mire the poetry of patriotism but who cowardly 
shrink from those sterner duties of which patri- 
otism consists. 

Think of a follower of Jesus Christ refusing to 
preach patriotism to men because they are gath- 



103 

ered in or over a saloon, after having been de- 
nied the opportunity of meeting in a church or 
even a church yard. If Jesus Christ had been 
so squeamish and "gentlemanly" as to have 
confined his services to the respectable people, 
the early church would have died before it 
was born. In no age has there been sufficient 
vitality in the classes that call themselves re- 
spectable to give permanent form to any social 
or religious movement. Those who wish to do 
great things only in a respectable manner never 
do great things. A man cannot at the same time 
be both great and respectable. 

In order to be respectable, he must stifle genius 
and cover with the ashes of artificiality all the 
deepest passions of the soul. He must destroy 
his individuality and trim his sympathies as he 
does his beard, like the barbarous Northmen 
when they entered Rome. 

Love for humanity that can be checked or dis- 
sipated by inartistic surroundings, contact with 
vice or the coarse companionship of intemperate 
men is not love at all, it is a mere fad, a fitful 



104 THE HEW DEMOCRACY. 

remnant of a religious instinct long since eaten 
out from within. 

Imagine a mother talking about how she loves 
to have her baby clean and sweet and whole- 
some, and then picture her refusing to undergo 
the hardship required in making her child sweet 
and clean and wholesome. Such a mother would 
be no mother at all, unless, perchance, a step- 
mother or mother-in-law. 

The young man referred to is a typical speci- 
men of a sniveling, impracticable and worthless 
counterfeit of religion, the only function of 
which is to emasculate and weaken our youth. 
It serves to ease their consciences and displace 
the instincts that prompt to goodness. For cour- 
ageous self-sacrifice, it substitutes the mumbling 
of prayers; instead of active, righteous contact 
with the world it demands the attendance at meet- 
ings in which love is expressed toward a phan- 
tasy millions of miles up into the stars, while the 
Living God of Heaven and earth is forgotten, 
and where imprecation, denunciation and charges 
of wickedness are dealt out to those manly and 
courageous persons who lift out a helping hand 



SAL OX JIFE TINGS. 105 

to the poor instead of praying for them and who 
fight to make this world and this life heavenly 
instead of paying their debts to their fellow crea- 
tures with mansions in the skies. 

The refusal of this young man who, accord- 
ing to his own statement, believed that the future 
welfare of the Nation depended upon the triumph 
of the principles represented by Mr. Bryan, to as- 
sist in spreading those principles in saloon meet- 
ings, means that his religious and social training 
had unfitted him to do any great or noble thing, 
unless in conformity with his Sunday-school 
manufactured tastes as to nicety and elegance. 

The young man sees the giant tree, injustice, 
and offers to assist in cutting it down but, when 
we hand him an ax, refuses to take off his coat 
and returns it saying that his little hatchet at 
home has a blue ribbon around it and that he 
won't cut with any other. 

He sings "Rescue the Perishing" at the Chris- 
tian Endeavor meeting, a pretty girl with pink 
cheeks and cherry lips on each side. The 
cheeks and lips and song are so pleasing, he 
thinks he will go further and help rescue the per- 



106 THE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

ishing. After careful study he is satisfied that 
people are perishing for want of his friendly ser- 
vices and the services of others like himself. 
Yet, when he is assigned a place to work, he ab- 
ruptly leaves his post of duty and goes back to 
prayer meeting, because, poor boy, no carpet is 
on the floor, no angel pictures grace the wall, and 
the tobacco smoke about him is offensive. 

Innocent creature! Let him continue to sing 
his hymns and say his prayers surrounded by 
pretty girls in the Christian Endeavor meeting 
and pretty boys who should have been born girls, 
while the great forces of reform fight the battles 
of the living God, conquer evil, destroy injustice 
and lift up the fallen. We can do without him 
and without his kind. 

Not that we want to. We do not. We need 
all possible help. We will not judge harshly 
all those who now are given over to such inno- 
cent amusements. For the delicate white hand, 
the girlish student face, the timid mamma's 
boy, taken from the prayer meeting and the 
Christian Endeavor Society, once taught to 
see the great truths of social salvation and 



SAL OX MEE TINGS. 107 

human progress, does not always retreat in 
holy horror when confronted with conflict and 
the smoke of battle. On the other hand, such 
timid, singing, praying boys often become Na- 
tional heroes. Before manhood is discovered by 
the growth of hair on the face, manly character 
sometimes reaches maturity, with qualities devel- 
oped, not only superior to tobacco smoke at a 
saloon meeting, and the naughty cuss words 
of the fellows who drink there, but to the smoke 
of powder and the thunder of cannon. 

Do not overlook nor belittle soft men, but ig- 
nore only those who stay soft after you have 
tried the hardening process. For where one 
heart may be formed of milk and water, the 
liquid state of another may be that of molten 
steel, and may only require the cooling pro- 
cess of an outdoor breeze to make it withstand 
the continuous persecution and conflict of years. 

There is no unholy place w r here men should 
not go who are fired by a passion for justice. 
It is a fact that one of the centers of the social 
life of the great cities of America and of Europe 
is the liquor saloon. How much we may deplore 



108 TEE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

this fact or the evil results that we see flowing 
from it, is entirely another question. The fact 
remains in spite of our deploring, our shocked 
ideals or our sympathies wrung by the desola- 
tion and death caused by it, that the center of the 
social life of our great cities, the place where so- 
ciety meets, (not that floating, top-heavy buoy 
that calls itself society, but real society, the people) 
is the liquor saloon. 

At present it is managed in America, not with 
any reference whatever to its social function, but 
merely for the private profit of individuals. In 
order to increase their private profits and to de- 
fend their special interests, the men who manage 
these saloons, as a general rule, abuse their 
powers and add inconceivably to the horrors of 
the vice of intemperence trying, by unnatural and 
vicious methods, to increase their gain. 

Not only this, but as the saloon is the center of 
the social life of our American cities, the pro- 
prietors of saloons and the manufacturers of liq- 
uors, who have associated their interests, have a 
terrible and unnatural advantage in controlling 
the political power of the people with whom they 



SAL OX 3IEL TIXGS. 109 

come in contact. They do not have to go where 
the people are because the saloon keeper, in the 
natural and usual performance of his business, is 
already in the midst of the people. He always 
has a crowd. He is the greatest preacher of mod- 
ern times. He does not have to invent new 
methods for REACHING THE MASSES. He 
does not have to scratch his bald head and say, 
"O, Lord! why are my sheep deserting me?" The 
saloon keeper always has a congregation, always 
a choir, is always surrounded by men in need of a 
friend, and, like other members of the human 
family having a strange mixture of greed and 
sympathy, cruelty and fellow-feeling, he exercises 
his charitable instincts and lends a material help- 
ing hand to the members of his congregation quite 
as often as do the five thousand and twenty thou- 
sand dollar a year ministers who preach not to 
men drinking, but often to men who have already 
drunk their fill. 

The saloon keeper preacher, however, lacks one 
advantage possessed by his more fortunate com- 
peer of the church pulpit, for, where a member 
of the saloon congregation has a perfect right to 



110 THE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

answer back and correct misstatements, slanders 
and unjust vituperation, the friend of the common 
people who happens into the fashinoable city 
church service must bite his lips and remain 
silent while the name of Jesus, the revolutionist, 
the poor man's friend, is used to strengthen vile 
calumny against His brave modern apostles who 
are fighting to realize practically in government 
the principles represented by the cross. 

Therefore, one of the most promising fields for 
the social reformer, for the man who drinks beer 
and the man who drinks water, for the man who 
smokes cigars and the man who washes his teeth 
before every meal with charcoal powder and lives 
on vegetables, is the liquor saloon. It is always 
open and you can go in without buying. You 
can take a seat free of charge and you can talk 
You have as much right to talk as the bartender, 
and even if opposed to your principles, good 
business judgment, if no other motive, prompts 
the average saloon keeper to be tolerant. He 
cannot afford to drive away any large per- 
centage oT his customers. You have a right, 
and even in the Republican saloons you can 



SAL ON MEE TINGS. 1 1 1 

get permission to declare the gospel of mo- 
nopoly's downfall in the back room, in the hall 
upstairs or in the main saloon, once a week, with- 
out paying anything for heat, light or hall 
rent. These are already furnished for the people 
who now go there. You do not need to adver- 
tise the meeting, for there is always a crowd about 
the saloon. After you have held two or three 
meetings they will grow in size and draw the fre- 
quenters from other resorts. 

The average saloon crowd is as open to con- 
viction and as ready to be taught concerning 
the moralizing of government and the establish- 
ment oi justice in the world as the average church 
congregation, and tney will treat you as civilly 
and listen as attentively even though every man 
present disagrees with you. 

Let the hundreds of saloons throughout our 
great cities be selected as a mission field for the 
new gospel of manliness and brotherhood. 
Christ went among publicans and wine-bibbers. 
We can afford to go among wine-bibbers, even 
when they are Republicans. Our crowd may be 
small at times but the kind of work that moves 



112 TEE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

the world and builds up civilization is work that 
is regular and continuous. 

Let the Volunteers organize by twos, and the 
one, two or three evenings a week that they can 
give to the cause, let those who choose this 
work go to a saloon and tell the fellows there 
that under a proper social system, each one of 
them can afford to have a home as sociable and 
homelike and comfortable as a saloon; that, 
after they declare their independence of the party 
whip, and, instead of obeying parties, command 
them to do their bidding, they can soon have such 
opportunities that they won't have to drink to for- 
get their troubles, because they will have no 
troubles; that they won't have to drink in order 
to imagine that they are happy, because they will 
have real happiness; that after the gold standard 
and monopoly are overthrown, there will be a 
hundred different pleasures and opportunities 
opened to them, that these will produce intoxi- 
cation just as delicious as that produced by wine 
and beer, and that every poor man who wants 
to drink will be allowed to drink, not slops and 
refuse, but the same fluids that now give the gout 
and dropsy to die millionaire. 



SALOON MEE TINGS. 113 

The way to get up a saloon meeting is to see 
the proprietor, tell him you are a Democrat, not 
a fraudulent, makebelieve hypocrite, using the 
Democratic name to defeat Democratic princi- 
ples, not an agent of the gold bugs trying to cor- 
rupt the Democratic party, not an attorney for 
monopoly attempting to pervert the Democratic 
organization to help millionaires rob Democratic 
voters, but that you are a real dyed-in-the-wool, 
anti-monopoly, Jeffersonian, Jacksonian, Bryan 
Democrat, standing with all fours on the Chicago 
platform, the enemy of its enemies, the foe of its 
traducers, and the opponent, uncompromising and 
implacable of every man who upholds the in- 
famous British Rothschild gold standard of 
money. Tell him that you would like to talk to 
his customers and a few others in his place every 
week, and show them how, by united political ac- 
tion in the Democratic party, they can be made 
just as happy as if they were drunk seven days 
each week. 

He will let you come, and if you talk straight 
from the shoulder, you will have a larger crowd 
at the second meeting than at the first. If you 



114 TEE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

keep the work up a year continuously, you will 
not only have your name enrolled in the book of 
heroes, kept by the Democratic leaders, but also 
in the book kept by the Divinity who guides the 
Nations. You will be rewarded in this world for 
your sacrificing labor if you live until the people 
crush monopoly, and if not, you will at least have 
that consciousness of' duty done which knows no 
time nor space. 



CHAPTER VI. 
THE HEROIC AND PROSAIC. 
Heroism and the spirit of martyrdom and of 
self-sacrifice are historical factors as real, as tang- 
ible and as much a part of human nature as greed 
or hunger. The young Volunteers who forsake 
home, business and personal ambition to help 
save our Nation from the money power, starting 
in the name of humanity astride bicycles, horse- 
back, afoot and in Bryan wagons, preaching the 
new gospel of glad tidings without money anc 
without price, eating whole wheat, dry bread and 
apples, with a square meal only now and then to 
remind them of trie good times coming, are not 
impelled by any strange or new force in society. 
They are not the disciples of a new cult or ism, 
the latest off-shot from the great tree of life. 
They are not a new product of civilization but on 
the other hand they arethereafconservativeand 
belong to the true nobility of the Human race, 
that brotherhood of heroes, patriots and martyrs 



116 THE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

of all ages and nations, as old as the human family 
itself. 

On the other hand, the essentially NEW PRO- 
DUCT of our civilization is the man who does not 
believe in heroism, who has stifled the nobler in- 
stincts with which nature originally endowed him, 
and fills his whole mind's horizon with the one 
image of gold. Those in whose minds avarice 
has devoured all other instincts and desires to the 
point of moral insanity, are the only strange or 
new off-shoots. They alone are the special and 
characteristic product of our particular period, dis- 
tinguished above all else by its complete surrender 
to the one passion — greed. The real cranks and 
monstrosities are not those who are in line with 
historic humanity, but rather those who have 
crucified their humanity on "a cross of gold" in 
accord with a temporary social perversion. 

HEROISM AND SOMETHING MORE. 

Some say it is the weakness of our movement 
that we depend too much on heroism and 
patriotism and other of the weaker instincts and 
uncertain qualities of human nature and therefore 
the movement must fail. Successful movements 



THE HEBOIC AND PROSAIC. 117 

appeal to the more substantial motives and in- 
stincts, such as cupidity, sectional pride, etc. 

While it is true that we appeal first of all to 
the patriotism of our citizens, to the heroic in 
man and to those deep religious and moral senti- 
ments of which heroism and patriotism are the 
highest product, and while it is true that we re- 
gard these sentiments when fully drawn out and 
properly applied, and during great occasions of 
National peril, as being stronger than cupidity, 
sectional pride, or even regard for life, and that 
the exercise of these qualities by vast bodies of 
men have repeatedly, during each century 
throughout the history of our race, saved the 
dominance of the Caucasian race and all those 
principles and institutions that give value to the 
modern world, and, while we intend during the 
four years to come, preparatory to the greatest 
crisis of history, to continue to appeal first and 
foremost and all the time to patriotism and hero- 
ism, love of justice and fellow feeling , still, we in- 
tend to utilize every force and every means that 
will aid in bringing about the better world for 
which we hope. 



118 THE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

We recognize that while in a moment of en- 
thusiastic ardor, a man will give his life for a 
principle, and that during hours of deep religious 
fervor, brought about by the preaching of gifted 
orators, people renounce their old ways of living 
and often divide up their property with the church 
and the poor, that such occasions are compara- 
tively rare, while every man born of woman de- 
sires food about three times a day, that he de- 
sires clothing and suffers for the want of it dur- 
ing every one of his sleeping and waking hours, 
that during a large portion of his life intense feel- 
ings and regard are turned toward some woman, 
and that nearly all men are at nearly all times vain, 
not in any bad sense, but that they desire the re- 
spect and the confidence of their fellow men, and 
when opportunity offers, strive to be conspicuous 
and influential, and desire to be feared and loved 
and admired for unusual qualities, possessions 
or acts. 

Therefore, to make our movement completely 
and wholly successful, we appeal first to patriotism 
and heroism, the noblest and highest qualities 
produced by centuries of religious and moral 



TEE HEBOIC AND PBOSAIC. 119 

training, but secondarily we appeal to men's am- 
bition, their love of gain, their desire to eat, to 
be clothed, to marry, to become influential, their 
vanity, their imagination, their love of activity and 
all the qualities that they possess. 

It does not lessen a soldier's courage for him 
to know that if victorious in battle he is to be 
promoted, or that if a city is taken or a country 
conquered, he is to have a plantation where he 
can rest in peace when his gray hairs come with 
his children healthy and happy about him. 
There is no need to dissect with the surgeon's 
knife of close analysis the motives and minds of 
men in order to separate every little vanity from 
the noble and unselfish impulses with which it is 
interwoven, nor to cut away and lay apart from the 
strong patriotic desire to serve one's country, 
every little individual and personal hope that 
in the event one's country is served and saved, 
those who bear the brunt of the battle will be 
especially favored and secure first recognition in 
the universal enjoyment consequent upon such 
victory. By taking human nature as we find it 
with its admixture of the heroic and prosaic, its 



120 TEE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

mingling of selfish and altruistic aims, we seek 
to make every impulse serve the cause of hu- 
manity by contributing to the one end — trium- 
phant Democracy. 

THE ROLL OF HONOR. 

The most important feature of the Democratic 
Volunteers' organization, is the honor roll, on 
which is recorded the work done by each Vol- 
unteer. To all faithful workers are issued semi- 
annually certificates of honor, and to those who 
perform services of unusual merit special medal? 
and other awards of recognition. 

One copy of the honor roll is kept by the Na- 
tional leaders in a safe-deposit in St. Louis, and 
a duplicate copy by the great leader of Democracy 
at his home. 

By this system, each worker knows that every- 
thing he does is recorded at headquarters, and i? 
kept there for all future time for reference by our 
national leaders, when they wish, either in ask- 
ing for services or bestowing favors, to find the 
real, deserving, fighting material in our party. 
Each worker knows, also, that it is the end of the 
unjust custom, whereby one or two loud- 



THE HEBOIC*;AND PBOSAIC. 121 

mouthed adventurers, who have done nothing 
but who claim all, in the hour of victory cast aside 
the unselfish workers, whose years of patient labor 
gained the victory. With an account kept of the 
sacrifices made, the clubs organized, the members 
secured by each party worker in our country, 
there can be no more climbing into favor on the 
shoulders of others, but, instead, each man stands 
on his own bottom, reaping the fruit and recog- 
nition of his own work, and is assigned to leader- 
ship as the result of the exercise of his own genius 
and talents. At present, every Congressman, 
Governor or President elected to office, is pun- 
ished sufficiently to offset all the pleasures and 
satisfactions of having been successful by the im- 
possible task of trying to disentangle the various 
claims of the men who helped elect him. But no 
such discordant scramble need ever recur, for 
the Volunteers will, in the future, keep an exact 
history of the service rendered by every party 
worker, and, in Congressional parlance, each 
fellow will know exactly "where he is at." The 
system is as carefully thought out and perfected 
as that of any standing army. 



122 TEE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

The roll of honor appeals to the strongest in- 
stincts in man, which have been utilized in every 
successful social or religious movement since the 
dawn of history. If he is vain, it appeals to his 
vanity. If heroic, it stimulates his heroism. If 
ambitious, he sees the way to get place and 
position is to merit them by faithful work and 
that they cannot be had by cheating the rightful 
owners out of the fruits of their victories, to 
which he has not contributed. 

In the Catholic Church and in many other in- 
stitutions through all the centuries, as among 
the followers of Napolean and Caesar, men have 
often given up their lives for a medal or a bit of 
ribbon. For such rewards England to-day gets 
almost as much service as from her vast pay-roll. 

By proper organization, vanity can be made 
to offset cupidity. It is as strong an instinct, and 
we have the means of satisfying it. To-day the 
name of England's Queen cannot inspire as great 
enthusiasm in the majority of the English speak- 
ing race, as does the name of William Jennings 
Bryan. The enthusiasm now aroused has suffi- 
cient force to accomplish all our ends. What we 



THE HEROIC AND PROSAIC. 123 

need is simply to harness this Niagara, organize 
this power, and apply it systematically and con- 
tinuously. It can be done. It is being done. 
Never in the history of our country has the year 
following a great political campaign been the 
scene of such a rejuvenation of the defeated 
party as has taken place since our late repulse. 

As every plant must shoot down two roots for 
sustenance, before putting forth a new twig, so 
we have decided to plant the roots of our organ- 
ization prolificacy throughout the Southern and 
Western states, where our cause is strong, thereby 
securing the support for a continuous and aggres- 
sive campaign before sending our Volunteers into 
the doubtful states and those still given over to 
the idolatrous worship of the golden calf. 

Each congressional district in the Southern and 
Western states can be made by contributions of 
one cent, five cents, ten cents at a time, collected 
by the Volunteer Speakers, to support perma- 
nently one organizer in Republican territory. 

There are many different ways to work. One 
is by educating and agitating and by advancing 
our principles indoors and outdoors upon every 



124 TEE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

possible occasion by public speeches. Another 
is to go to work quietly, and, by personal man-to- 
man solicitation, to organize regular ward or pre- 
cinct clubs in one's own town or county. This 
is the first thing to be done, where no regular 
Democratic club exists independent of boodling 
bosses. But, anyhow, get five true and tried 
workers enlisted and forward their names to 
headquarters. They will then receive monthly 
instructions for carrying on and enlarging the 
work. When a club is already formed, the Vol- 
unteer is to build it up by increasing its member- 
ship and educating its members, and defeating, 
as club officers, any man who is known to apolo- 
gize for the existence of any monopoly whatever. 
After this try to establish a league of the clubs 
in the county, city or state, known to be formed 
on right principles. 

In the centuries to come, there will be no 
prouder title to boast of, no higher family honor, 
no more distinctive mark of aristocracy, than 
this record in black and white that one's fore- 
father belonged to the band of patriots who, 
through four years of persecution and struggle, 



THE HE BO I G AND PBOSAIC. 125 

succeeded in driving from American soil, that 
last representative of historic tyranny, organized 
plutocracy. 



CHAPTER VII. 
PRACTICAL POLITICS. 
In a cause as holy as ours, false modesty is 
as unwise as false dignity. When we realize that 
money represents human effort, that it gives 
multiplied power either in war or peace and that 
the possession of money, with its accompanying 
power to an almost unlimited extent, is enjoyed 
by our enemies, it is well for us to admit at the 
start that we, every Volunteer of us, must make 
constant efforts wherever speaking or working, 
to raise funds, on however small a scale, for the 
great work before us. One humble but time- 
honored method, which has proved useful in every 
popular movement, recorded in history, is that of 
"taking up a collection." People may laugh at 
it and the collections be small but we must not 
be deterred by ridicule nor discouraged by the 
apparent insignificance of the returns. This is 
the only way to give all the people systematically 
and persistently a chance to contribute accord- 



128 THE XEW DEMOCRACY. 

ing to ability to the cause that means liberty and 
the opening of opportunity to them. Therefore, 
let no speaker listen to advice from the timid 
and over-modest, who shrink from the sneers and 
taunts of the over-nice, but at every meeting let 
them pass around the hat after the manner of our 
forefathers. We must also remember that in 
every audience, however small, there may be some 
penitent Croesus awake to existing evils but as 
yet with no clear vision of a remedy, with power 
and will to help but lacking knowledge as to 
where such help should be given. Sudden con- 
versions are not unknown where the message of 
truth is delivered with sincerity and simplicity. 
There are thousands of rich men at this moment 
who, if properly appealed to, would give liber- 
ally to the cause that to them seemed likely to 
•promote the general welfare. There are many 
human hearts now waiting, like the Pool of Beth- 
esda, for the angel's touch, which shall "trouble" 
their calm and transform them into sources of 
healing for the woes of humanity. No speaker 
knows but he may be the one destined to open up 
these closed fountains of power. The heights 



PRACTICAL POLITICS. 129 

and depths of human nature lie beyond our 
ordinary vision. A man's power of response to 
an appeal in behalf of those who suffer is not 
always graven on his forehead, so that "he that 
runneth may read." In any audience there may 
be some listener, apparently indifferent, in whom 
all the preliminary processes of conversion have 
already taken place, and who needs only the 
warm breath of an atmosphere charged with un- 
selfish enthusiasm to complete the work of re- 
generation. Such cases are on record. Within 
a few years, the gift of a million dollars was re- 
ceived by the promoters of a reform movement in 
New York, not from an habitual contributor to 
such enterprises, but from a sudden convert, a 
man ordinarily cold and indifferent to humanitar- 
ian movements, and before unresponsive to his 
brothers' needs. Perhaps it was not the need 
that previously had failed to stir his heart, but 
only the methods of helping that had not satisfied 
his mind. There are rich men and women to- 
day, honestly desirous of bringing about better 
social conditions and willing to make sacrifices to 
that end, but who, so far, have found none of the 



130 TEE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

methods suggested practicable. To such we 
may appeal with certainty of response, thereby 
being furnished with the sinews of war by those 
who owe their wealth to the very system we 
oppose. 

And why not? Because a man has been 
thrown into a brutal and wasteful contest and has 
come victorious from the struggle is no reason 
why he should wish his children and humanity 
at large to be forced into another of the same 
kind. Such a man well knows that he, too, in 
spite of apparent success, is also a victim. He 
sees the possibilities of life under a better social 
system — the order, the beauty, the harmony, the 
possible development of higher faculties and ex- 
tinction of those thaF link him with the brutes. 
All this he sees, and even while scrambling with 
the rest for possession of the booty, he would 
hail with joy any change that promised to relieve 
his children from a like sad necessity. 

Starve fifty Sunday school teachers for a week , 
lock them in a cage together, throw in a roast of 
beef, a plum pudding, a pitcher of soup, a plate 
of pickles and a pot of beans, at the same time 



PBACTICAL POLITICS. 131 

telling each to get what he can, as no more will 
be furnished for a month; and a swinish scramble 
will at once ensue, in which two thirds of the food 
will be wasted, and in the end one man will have 
a pocket full of plum pudding, another a handful 
of pickles, and the strongest the roast beef to him- 
self in a corner. 

Let it be understood that he who gets the 
roast beef is no worse than the others, nor will 
he, because of his success, NECESSARILY 
favor an indefinite continuation of such brutal 
scrambling. The difference between him and the 
least successful is a difference in strength, NOT 
NECESSARILY A DIFFERENCE IN AIM. 
To-day, most men are actuated by the same spirit. 
To desire success and a share of life's gifts is 
right and normal. It is the political system under 
which we live that has transformed this natural 
and healthy impulse into a devilish desire to ab- 
sorb not only all wealth but all opportunities. 

To remedy this radical evil, it is not enough to 
change individuals; we must change the system. 
It is, of course, to be expected that the impulse to 
change our present barbarous monopolistic 



132 THE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

methods will come from those who have failed in 
the scramble for riches. For the possession of 
wealth naturally tends to promote in the minds 
of those who possess it, a certain degree of satis- 
faction with the methods by which it has been 
acquired and a tendency to oppose any change. 
A spirit of toadyism and fear of social ostracism 
also induces many to sacrifice their highest ideals. 
Great fortunes often destroy the independence 
which it might be supposed they would secure to 
their possessors; yet, in spite of the temptations 
of wealth and the unwritten, but none the less 
rigidly enforced mandates of a heartless society, 
not a few are ready to make the required sacri- 
fices in order to advance the interests of our com- 
mon humanity. 

To such partially awakened minds, it ought not 
to be difficult to show that the times are ripe for 
a solution of existing problems other than that 
offered by charitable associations. For eighteen 
centuries the Good Samaritan has been the work- 
ing model of the church and society, yet the num- 
ber of the wounded and robbed on the world's 
highway has so increased that the gigantic sys- 



PBACTICAL POLITICS. 133 

terns of modern charity are inadequate to meet the 
increasing demands upon them. Why? The 
answer is clear. No very keen intelligence is re- 
quired to see that one very important duty has 
been neglected by the Good Samaritans of all 
times. Occupied with caring for the wounded, 
they have neglected to hunt down the thieves, 
who have accordingly increased in numbers and 
boldness. It is time for us to leave effects and 
study causes, to organize at once to hunt down 
the thieves, for, when these are routed, there will 
be fewer victims on whom to exercise charity. 
Why plan educational and charitable institutions 
in the slums when the causes that produce the 
slums are left untouched? Why add another to 
the five hundred churches of a great city, when 
the influence of the money power makes tlie 
preaching of the real gospel well nigh impossible, 1 



iA letter lies before me now from a talented and earnest young- minister 
of the Episcopal church, in which the writer despairingly declares that he 
dare not preach the social and economic doctrines of Christ, Iesf he bring 
ruin upon his wife and children. "The money-power," he declares, "has 
control of the church and Christ's ministers must either trim their sails to 
catch the wind of ifs favor or suffer temporal shipwreck. It is easy to 
say that the Christian should be ready ot meet any martyrdom, but it is 
equally true that it is not from within the bosom of the church that such 
trials should come." 



134 TEE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

thus largely destroying the usefulness of those 
already built? Instead of new homes of charity, 
let us organize to end the need for charity. In- 
stead of building one new school, the true edu- 
cator will ally himself with those forces that seek, 
through public action, to place education within 
the reach of all. Instead of building a new 
church, the devout Christian or Jew will divide 
his substance with the party that aims to make 
possible the application of the principles of re- 
ligion to the everyday affairs of life and to all 
social institutions. 

Never was there a cause that appealed more 
strongly than ours to a man's generous instinct?. 
In the middle ages all Europe was fired by the 
idea of wresting the Holy Sepulchre from infidel 
hands; to-day Greek and Cuban patriots are lay- 
ing everything upon their country's altar for the 
sake of national honor and freedom. Our cause 
is nobler, larger than any of these. Not Christ's 
tomb, but the race He died to redeem; not an 
insignificant nation, but humanity is through us 
pleading to be rescued and restored to liberty. 



PBAGTICAL POLITICS. 135 

Our appeal is not to a class, a church or a nation; 
it is to MEN for MAN. 

ONE DOLLAR GIVEN TO OUR CAUSE 
WILL ACCOMPLISH MORE FOR THE 
ALLEVIATION OF HUMAN SUFFERING, 
FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF TRUE 
CIVILIZATION, THAN FIVE HUNDRED 
DOLLARS SPENT FOR ANY COLLEGE, 
CHARITY OR CHURCH. As hundreds of 
poor men have sacrificed all they possessed, given 
up home and the comforts of family life, to travel 
from town to town urging the principles of the 
New Democracy; so will there be rich men, who, 
feeling their RELATIONSHIP TO HUMAN- 
ITY TO BE MORE BINDING than any ties 
uniting them with a selfish class, will also give 
up the larger part of what they have and lay it on 
the altar of their country. 

Those who feel the divine impulse to give to 
this movement will give double by giving prompt- 
ly, and will have the added personal joy of seeing 
some of the results of their generosity. Not all 
the results, because each dollar given to this 
cause starts a train of consequences for the hap- 



136 THE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

piness of men and for the peace of society that 
will continue as long as this old earth is inhabited 
by mortals. The effect of every penny, given by 
the smallest child or the poorest servant girl, may 
produce results for good that will be felt by man- 
kind through all the generations to come. 

It is not unreasonable for us to ask for con- 
stantly, and to expect to receive a single donation 
of a million dollars sometime during the coming 
four years. Such donations have many times 
been given to causes less holy than ours, and in 
emergencies not to be compared to it in import- 
ance. We can in reason hope for several gifts 
of not less than twenty-five thousand dollars each, 
and many of not less than one thousand dollars, 
and thousands of lesser gifts proportionate to the 
purses of the poor who will regard it not as a 
duty, but as a privilege to thus co-operate with 
God. Such amounts have been subscribed to a 
single college and to a single religious denomin- 
ation within the memory of the youngest reader. 
Can we not rationally expect that even more will 
be given to the movement which is to multiply 



PRACTICAL POLITICS. 137 

many times the usefulness of all colleges and 
churches? 

But do not trim your sails nor adapt your argu- 
ments to the rich, in order to secure donations, 
but speak bravely and fearlessly in behalf of jus- 
tice and the rights of the people, and, if special 
selfish interests are thereby alienated, unselfish 
interests will be drawn to us. 

Although generous help may be expected from 
those who have been enriched by the very system 
that we seek to destroy, nevertheless it is a fact 
that, as a class, the rich are satisfied with the 
system of injustice that has given them their 
riches, and, as a class, will oppose now, as they 
have opposed during all history, every reform or 
change that promises improvement to the masses. 
Therefore the bulk of the money to be raised for 
the people's cause must probably be given by the 
people themselves according to their means. 

We should for this reason not only call for 
donations and pass around the hat at meetings 
when the people are enthusiastic, but, in form- 
ing clubs in every township throughout our 
country, we should try to induce each to ap- 



138 THE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

point its most active and popular man as Treas- 
urer, and especially to instruct him to collect 
every week or month, a regular subscription, 
HOWEVER SMALL, from every friend of our 
movement in his community. In this way, we can 
establish a system similar to "Peter's Pence," and 
the missionary contributions of the Protestant 
churches, and raise a fund during the coming 
four years that will be a wonder to ourselves and 
a menace to our enemies. 

It may be asked, if the Volunteer Speakers 
work without pay, many of them living on heroic 
diet and traveling on foot, what need of money? 
To this it may be replied that the legitimate and 
honest uses for money in promoting any cause 
are too many to enumerate. The field is largt 
and workers of many kinds are needed. Though 
many of our speakers will travel and work con- 
tinuously without compensation and the vast 
majority will give their time without any reward 
even for their expenses, still, to utilize properly 
the Volunteer work of the thousands who are wil- 
ling to make such sacrifices, it is very desirable 
that we have at least one paid organizer in each 



PBACTICAL POLIUICS. 139 

Congressional District, and, if possible, in each 
county one who will receive a moderate salary 
and who will be held responsible for all the rout- 
ine work required in his territory. The Volun- 
teer workers and speakers in any locality can be 
made many times as effective, if there is some one 
man responsible to the national office for the 
methodical arrangement of the work and the 
systematic utilization of their services. It is also 
highly desirable that every Volunteer be given a 
bountiful supply of the very best literature on 
economic subjects. Money is also needed for our 
central school for Volunteer Speakers in St. 
Louis, where those with hearts afire to speak for 
Democracy can come, and within one, two or 
three months, be trained and equipped with a 
practical knowledge of the details of the work in 
which they wish to engage. 

But it is folly to enlarge further upon the need 
of money. Every person who appreciates the 
nature of our struggle knows that everything we 
do can be done more effectively with additional 
funds. 



CHAPTER VIII. 
FUNDAMENTALS. 

To educate the people, the first essential is that 
the educators know exactly what they wish to 
teach and the ultimate purpose of such teaching. 

In the previous chapters are outlined methods 
of reaching and persuading people. More im- 
portant, however, than any manner of speaking, 
traveling, advertising or gaining an audience is 
it that our speakers never lose sight of the few 
great basic principles of our movement, and that 
they keep these central truths steadily before the 
eyes and minds of the people. 

The principal danger to be overcome in every 
popular movement is that in the adaptation of the 
central truth of the movement to local and tempo- 
rary requirements, the truth itself may be lost 
in a multitude of petty intricacies. 

In the beginnings of the great religions when 
they spread irresistibly over the world, their teach- 
ers held firmly to a few great salient truths. But 



142 TEE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

the influence of every religion waned when its 
ministers, forgetting its real object, gave them- 
selves up to details of worship and church govern- 
ment. This is also the history of nearly even- 
Christian denomination. In their vigor and 
youth, they dwelt principally upon the great pri- 
mary themes. When these were forgotten or ne- 
glected, the movements themselves lost their 
power. 

The weakness of the people's movement to- 
day is that our leaders abandon too often the 
center of the stream, drawn away by the side cur- 
rents and little eddies. The intricacies of finance, 
statistics and details of administration, often ab- 
sorb their whole attention. Those who would 
guide the crowd to a higher civilization forget the 
object of their endeavors, the crowd forgets; then 
medley and Babel. Instead of marching to- 
ward the goal, the multitude halt by the wayside, 
and go to arguing over the incidents of the jour- 
ney. The compass, governed by fixed and uni- 
versal laws, that acts regardless of the turns in the 
road, no longer directs them. They are at the 
mercy of the local, the incidental and temporary. 



FUNDAMENTALS. 143 

When they give up the main road to wander oft" 
in bypaths, unity and progress cease; division, 
disorder and disintegration begin. 

The silver question, the question as to the 
power of the Supreme Court Justices, the rail- 
way question, are all merely incidental to the one 
great fundamental conflict that has been waged 
for centuries, the conflict of the general welfare 
resting on right against the special interests that 
thrive by wrong, of liberty against tyranny; the 
people against plutocracy. This conflict should 
be kept in the forefront by every Volunteer, 
who should urge continuously and repeatedly 
upon his hearers the few great simple truths of 
Democracy, holding these out in bold relief, like 
mountains above the rolling slopes and project- 
ing crags that lead up to them, keeping the pop- 
ular mind centered on the goal of their efforts, 
the North Star, as it w T ere, of progress. 

Revolutions and special evolutions are brought 
about in human affairs, NOT SO MUCH BY 
THE DISSEMINATION OF A GREAT 
MULTITUDE OF IDEAS, AS BY THE CON- 
CENTRATION OF A MULTITUDE OF 



144 TEE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

MINDS UPON A SINGLE IDEA. This 
single idea, however, cannot be of a local or 
temporary nature. It must, on the other 
hand, be comprehensive and of sufficient im- 
port to stir the very souls of the masses. A mere 
question of currency, transportation or judicial 
powers, however important, even if absolutely re- 
quisite to further progress, is not capable of pro- 
ducing the universal enthusiasm required to in- 
stitute any fundamental innovation. The truths 
on which the popular mind is to be focused, must 
be self-evident, general, and their application not 
limited to a short time or a special locality. With 
the people's attention fixed upon a great moral 
truth universally applicable, their faces all turned 
toward, their eyes fixed on one star of deliver- 
ance, it is easy to convince them that to realize 
their goal no sacrifice can be too great. Men are 
prepared to act intelligently concerning currency, 
transportation or other incidental reforms when 
their enthusiasm and purpose are fully aroused 
and their attention is fixed upon universal laws 
about which there can be no doubt, hesitancy or 
confusion. Absorbed in great things, the petty 



FUNDAMENTALS. 145 

causes of strife and dissension disappear. We 
can gain unity only when, leaving details to tried 
leaders, the people concentrate their attention on 
those simple realities, self-evident and capable of 
being understood by all, the attainment of which 
forces the righteous settlement of details and of 
all questions dependent and incidental. 

THE WORLD BIG; GOD GOOD; MAN 
ALONE RESPONSIBLE. 

The first such central truth, self-evident to every 
man, to be proclaimed tirelessly by the Volun- 
teers, is that the earth is large enough and rich 
enough to supply all the good things of life to 
every human being born on it. Urge that espe- 
cially since the triumphs of modern science is it 
possible for man to satisfy every natural craving, 
every healthy desire, every reasonable hope and 
dream, without any man being compelled to sac- 
rifice another human being to his purpose. 

The great and the humblest mind alike can see 
this truth. It stands out an impregnable tower 
of strength above all minor and subsidiary ques- 
tions. It is unanswerable, incontravertible and 
DYNAMICALLY IRRESISTIBLE. The earth 



146 THE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

is large enough and rich enough and human 
energy sufficient to produce in abundance every- 
thing required to supply every natural, healthful 
human desire. This means that the world, now 
made hell by human greed abetted by ignorance 
and prejudice, might just as well be heaven. The 
misery caused by poverty, tyranny and neglect, 
can be displaced by happiness, plenty and liberty 
for all. 

Following this and demonstrable from it by 
the eternal laws of Logic is the conclusion that 
the one primary and all-important duty of every 
man seeing it is to do all he can, after providing 
for his simplest physical wants, to help syste- 
matize and civilize human effort and overcome 
prejudice so as to obtain this result. 

The immediate effect of the practical acceptance 
of this one self-evident truth is almost inconceiv- 
able. Once convince men that their sufferings 
are unnecessary, that science has placed in their 
hands all the power and materials needed which 
rightly applied will give to all men the satisfac- 
tion of all their normal desires, and you at once 
transform the world. 



FUNDAMENTALS. 147 

The most formidable obstacle in the way of 
further progress is not that men are insufficiently 
versed in political economy or lacking in intelli- 
gence, but it is that the people are without hope. 
Popular effort has so often been thwarted by sel- 
fish cunning, great moral enthusiasms dissipated 
by the science and superior organization of ty- 
ranny, that men have lost heart. 

Despair is the chief opponent of progress. Our 
greatest need is hope. The people must have 
faith that something can be done. 

The majority of men know of public measures 
that would be beneficial if an upward step were 
possible, but they are overwhelmed by a multi- 
tude of incidental obstacles and petty disappoint- 
ments that cloud their small horizons and shut 
off from sight the great universal and historic 
forces that are slowly but surely working out their 
destinies. 

Convince men that our country is large enough 
and rich enough to give them all an opportunity 
to work and earn sufficient to support their fam- 
ilies and educate their children properly, convince 
them that their present poverty and sufferings are 



148 THE NE W DEMO CEA C Y. 

wholly the result of social crimes, and, if they can 
believe that this change is actually to be brought 
about, you change the whole base of their op- 
erations and revolutionize their attitude of mind. 
They are then ready to co-operate with those bold 
thinkers who have studied out the details of so- 
cial progress. 

Our speakers cannot dwell too long upon, can- 
not repeat too often, this one all-important, funda- 
mental truth, the basis of all right political thought 
and action, namely, that the world is all right, na- 
ture is lavish, God Almighty is generous, and that 
human invention has multiplied many times the 
gifts that God originally gave to man, and now 
the human family might just as well sit down amid 
merrymaking to the great feast steaming before 
us, prepared through ages of endeavor, but for 
a miserable dog in the manger. 

Proclaim everywhere that organized greed is this 
dog. Teach that the highest patriotism consists 
in striking it, that the only martyrs are those de- 
voured by it, that to kill it is the sublime mission 
of this generation. 

Do not try to teach many things, but urge with 



FUNDAMENTALS. 149 

all the passion of your being at all times and in all 
places, the self-evident and fundamental truth that 
our world contains everything required to make 
men happy. If want exists, it is the result of 
crime, Those who profit by this crime try to 
convince us that nothing can be done to prevent 
it. Our work is to create hope and courage and 
let the people know that this crime can be 
stopped, the criminals caught and punished, and 
the purposes of God and nature be permitted to 
proceed unmolested. Tell the people they can 
put an end to their sufferings, that misery results 
from human, not from natural causes, and that it 
need not be. Teach and preach and cry aloud this 
one fact. Repeat it indoors and out, with all the 
fire and intensity within you. Each convert will 
become a center, and our cause will spread irre- 
sistibly. 

Therefore, Volunteers, do not weary your 
hearers with statistics and historical or legal min- 
utiae; do not cram them with detailed arguments 
relating to questions of a local or temporary na- 
ture ; do not confuse them by trying to explain all 
the intricacies of a financial system soon to perish 



150 THE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

from off the earth. Rather even let the sophis- 
tries of an opponent go unanswered. But con- 
centrate all your energies upon helping turn the 
attention of the people away from petty and vex- 
ing intricacies to these few great central truths, 
which, if once clearly seen, make all else plain. 

The man who comprehends fully the truth that 
our world, since the discoveries of modern science, 
is capable of giving every human being all the 
good things of life, that as civilization is now 
blessed and glorious to some so it can be made 
to all — such a man will forsake all small purposes 
at once and devote himself thereafter to the real- 
ization of his ideal. Nothing else in the world 
can compare to this work in importance. When 
he learns that there is but one great party that 
stands for progress, he will immediately ally him- 
self with that party. 



CHAPTER IX. 
THE CHURCH AS A FIELD. 

Though in large cities the shelter admitted to 
be the most accessible to the poor, who wish to 
discuss methods for improving their condition, is 
the corner saloon, yet in country districts it will 
be found that the churches still cling to many of 
their ancient virtues andjwill be found open and 
hospitable to every traveler who has a suggestion 
to make for the good of the community. 

Whatever a speaker's prejudices may be against 
any church or against all churches, when he con- 
secrates his life to the cause of humanity through 
the Democratic party, he must suppress such prej- 
udices and regard all buildings as existing for 
use. And a true Volunteer is always certain that 
the highest use that can be made of any building 
in the world is to have taught in it the truths of 
human brotherhood and progress as embodied in 
the New Democracy. 

In securing a church building for purposes of 



152 THE NE W DEMO CBA C Y. 

instruction, it is best not to mention the name of 
our movement. The name that we have adopted 
being an old name and used by various people for 
various purposes has been used upon numerous 
occasions by bad people for bad purposes. Even 
the word politics, which, in reality, means the 
science and art of government, has come to mean, 
in the minds of many, a mere personal contest for 
gain and position. The sacred banner of Dem- 
ocracy has often been dragged into these de- 
grading brawls and the principles designated by 
the banner and name lost sight of. For these 
reasons and on account of the limitations of the 
average human judgment, it is well in dealing 
with church committees to discard all political 
names and to ask only for permission to speak 
in behalf of human brotherhood, social improve- 
ment or methods of helping the poor. The fact 
that human brotherhood can only be realized by 
men through the establishment of Democratic 
principles need not be told the committee, but had 
better be reserved for the audience. The fact that 
justice is a mere dream, intangible and unreal, un- 
less, by political action on the part of the many, 



THE CHURCH AS A FIELD. 153 

the few who profit by injustice are deprived of 
their privileges (or, in other words, until the Dem- 
ocratic program is carried out), makes it eminently 
proper that church buildings be opened to our 
speakers as often as possible. Of course, when 
the churches of a town are controlled by scribes 
and Pharisees, as they were when Paul was a 
volunteer speaker some centuries ago, unless 
some other building can be had, we must follow 
Paul's example and make our rostrum in the 
open street or field; but where the church build- 
ings are controlled by Christians instead of gold 
worshippers, by sincere men who desire justice and 
brotherhood and to help the poor, then, however 
different our prejudices, our personal likings or 
our superstitions may be, we should grasp our 
newly acquainted brothers by the hand and ar- 
range with them for meetings in the church for 
the examination of methods whereby religion can 
be made practicable and applied to human affairs. 
To the charitable who are really to be found 
here and there in the village and agricultural 
churches, we must make plain that no amount of 
teaching or preaching, applied internally or ex- 



154 THE NEW DEMOGBACY. 

ternally, can ever benefit the poor, until organized 
society recognizes men's rights, women's rights 
and children's rights as equal to money rights. 
Buildings owned by Catholics, the different Prot- 
estant denominations, by Jews, both reform and 
orthodox, and by free-thinking societies, can all 
be secured for the promulgation of these moral 
truths, if our workers will divest themselves of 
prejudices and don a tactful address. The success 
of this plan lies altogether in the judgment, per- 
sonality and breadth of mind of the Volunteer 
who attempts the task. 

When you approach the trustee of a Metho- 
dist, Episcopalian, Catholic or a Jewish church, 
remember that the building, the use of which you 
ask, has been paid for by contributions given at 
a sacrifice by earnest men and women, with 
minds turned towards the solemn and higher 
things of life. However mixed with ignorance, 
superstitious fear or motives of vanity, these 
buildings, in the smaller towns and agricultural 
communities, are associated with thoughts above 
and separated from personal controversies and 
material things and, if you can convince those in 



THE CHURCH AS A FIELD. 155 

control that you wish to present facts, views and 
ideas of a helpful nature to the community, not 
incongruous with the teaching of their faith, you 
will generally receive an affirmative answer. 
LAY PREACHING. 
It is common in country districts for laymen, 
persons neither ordained nor licensed as minis- 
ters, to speak from Christian pulpits at regular 
church services. This custom should be utilized. 
A lecture in a church building on a week night 
may attract the more studious or the more curi- 
ous of the community and supply them with rich 
materials for right thinking; but a lay sermon to 
a regular congregation, backed by the regular 
services and the presence of the minister, carries 
with it a force and authority possible on no other 
occasion. A Volunteer, by reciting, under such 
auspices, a simple story of the crimes against God 
and humanity perpetrated by the money power, 
and describing feelingly the effect of unnecessary 
poverty on the souls and characters of men, will 
not only stir the congregation to a new sense of 
patriotic duty, but will furnish material to the 
country minister enabling him to add a new flavor 



156 THE NE W DEMO CRA G Y. 

to the food of his flock for months to come. In 
those outlying districts where God has not been 
entirely superseded by gold in the church, a large 
part of the educational work of our movement can 
be accomplished in this way. 

The farmers compose a large part of our 
country's population and vote. They still believe 
in healthful religion and its power to affect human 
life. They can best be reached on Sunday and 
very often better through the church than in any 
other way. The reason that the great cities have 
not responded so quickly and so enthusiastically 
to our movement as the country districts is that 
vice, crime and disease in the great cities have, to 
a large extent, eaten away the capacity for ap- 
preciating justice and brotherhood, and destroyed 
in a large class the fundamental virtues of courage, 
manliness, patriotism and belief in the supremacy 
of good. It is to the country, where these vir- 
tues are still fresh and normal, that our move- 
ment must appeal principally. In the city there 
are a thousand places of amusement and dis- 
sipation for every idle hour. The boy coming 
from school or work, the mechanic after his day's 



TEE CEURCE AS A FIELD. 157 

labor pass the open saloon, filled with music 
and merry-making, the theatre, with its novelties, 
laughter and appeals to all the emotions, the 
gambler's den, the game tables, the dives and a 
hundred other places, always open, some posi- 
tively and immediately hurtful to both health and 
morals, others absorbing time, attention and vi- 
tality. 

In the country, however, work or study done, 
a man or boy has not so many places of amuse- 
ment. There is much more inducement than in 
the city to attend some church entertainment, 
some healthful neighborhood ball, and much 
more time and energy left for meetings at the 
school or church for the discussion of social prob- 
lems and questions of national or class well-be- 
ing. 

Thus the Volunteer who would teach farmers 
and villagers must accept the church as one very 
promising field of work. 

SUNDAY WORK. 

No day is more appropriate for effective work 
in behalf of human brotherhood than Sunday. 
Bv common consent it has been set aside by the 



158 THE NE W DEMOCBACY. 

majority of civilized races for serious thought, 
meditation and worship, and what is more befit- 
ting this day than to think out, study out and 
talk out the solution to the great problem of 
human justice and brotherhood. To speak for 
the New Democracy on Sunday is no more than 
to gather in the fruit of all the great religions 
that have come down to us. The New Democ- 
racy is not religion and those who proclaim its 
truths are neither preachers nor priests, but it is 
religion's highest product. The great religions 
of the world, nurtured by God's hand and grow- 
ing out of the fertile and sympathetic souls of 
the men and women of all climes and all cen- 
turies, have at last produced a practical ideal cap- 
able of being realized in actual life. This pro- 
duct is the New Democracy. It is the answer to 
the prayers of the ages. It is God's gift granted 
in answer to the cries of suffering of injustice and 
poverty throughout the world. It is God's 
method of redeeming society, of saving our na- 
tion, now well-nigh unto death, from greed and 
sin. Let each retain his attachment to his own 
sect and religion, but instead of quarreling about 



THE CHURCH AS A FIELD. 159 

sectarian differences, let us unite in realizing 
our common dreams of brotherhood. Instead of 
building new walls to separate us, let us make one 
platform so large that on it all earnest sons of 
God can stand erect, confident of His presence. 
Centuries before Jesus Christ traversed the 
plains of Galilee and bathed in the troubled 
waters of the Jordan, there was one Buddha who, 
despising the superstitions of his time, gathered 
about him others who, like him, believed that the 
larger part of human suffering was unnecessary 
and could be extinguished by human agency. 
This band traveled throughout the most populous 
districts of Western Asia teaching the great 
truth that the object of life's endeavor should be 
to lessen pain and to increase joy. Their one 
command was "cease causing pain; do not kill or 
cause to suffer any man or animal." And within 
two hundred years, from this little band and from 
this one whole-hearted man, an enthusiasm for 
mercy and love and justice overspread a third 
of the human race. Buddha's teachings were free 
from the multitude of miserable superstitions that 
haunt the people who bear his name to-day. His 



THE NEW DEMOCRACY. 160 

teachings, with those of Zoroaster, Confucius, 
Mencius, Moses and Christ, in their purity, at- 
tempted primarily to induce men to live as 
brothers, to teach men that individual good is 
social good and that both duty and true happi- 
ness consist in devotion to others — to the com- 
monwealth. 

Some preachers, however, get so in the habit 
of prophesying that, when their prophecies arc 
fulfilled, they think it wicked and heretical to be- 
lieve it. They refuse to believe their own eyes 
when they see the answer to their prayers. So 
deep-rooted has grown their habit of prayer 
that the means has become an end. They ask no 
longer to get what they ask for but for the exer- 
cise of asking, which they call pious. Their 
prayers answered, they are astounded. Now that 
their prophecies are fulfilled, they open their un- 
believing eyes in wonderment and condemn those 
who stop asking for what is already given. 
DON'T ASK FOR WHAT YOU HAVE. 

Christ many times used the relation of a child 
to its father to represent the relation of man to 
God. When a boy begs his father for a sleigh 



THE CHURCH AS A FIELD. 161 

and pony, and, after mucH pleading, the father 
grants his request, the boy stops asking, accepts 
the gift with thanks and proceeds to take a ride. 
If he were to continue on his knees pleading for 
them after being told they were in the back yard 
subject to his orders, we should call him a simple- 
ton. What is the use of his saying, "Oh, papa, 
please, dear papa, give me a pony and sleigh," 
when papa has already given it and is anxious to 
see it driven past the house. If the boy has any 
sense at all, upon first seeing his father drive his 
new pony toward home, he will stop praying, 
take off his hat, throw it up in the air, and hallo a 
"Hurrah for pop." He will jump into the sleigh, 
go for his best girl, and not show up again till two 
o'clock in the morning. 

For centuries the human race has longed and 
prayed and hoped for a time when justice would 
be possible on earth, when the reign of brutality 
would be superceded by the triumph of justice 
and brotherly love. This desire, this deep yearn- 
ing, has taken definite expression in the ceremon- 
ials and prayers of all religions, and in the grand 
prayer given us by Jesus Christ: 



162 THE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

"Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on 
earth as it is in Heaven." 

The soul of the universe has found expression 
in the Divine Hand that guides the course of na- 
tions, and has answered the prayers of the 
churches and the heroes and the saints. And that 
justice, which for centuries has been an object of 
prayer, has become, for the first time in his- 
tory, a tangible, definite thing, capable of reali- 
zation. What we have asked for, God has made 
possible. Why now crawl longer in the dust 
like worms beneath the feet of tyrants, when God 
bids us rise and stand erect? Why continue to 
pray and plead for what God has already placed 
within our reach? Tell the preachers to stop 
praying for this gift, already ours, and accept it 
as God gave it. THIS SIMPLE ACT OF AC- 
CEPTING GODS ANSWER TO THE 
PRAYERS OF THE GOOD AND THE 
TRUE OF ALL PAST CENTURIES, IS THE 
PROGRAM OF THE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

I ask father for a horse and sleigh. Now that 
he brings it to me, I stop asking for it, and take 
a ride. We have prayed during centuries for ai> 



THE CHURCH AS A FIELD. 163 

era of justice. The New Democracy is the ful- 
fillment of God's prophecy. It is the greatest 
moral tidal wave that ever thrilled with new life 
this old world of ours. It embodies the practical 
program by means of which the Infinite Intelli- 
gence is leading humanity to its inheritance. 

HUMANITY'S SCOUTS HAVE FOUND 
THE WAY. 

A body of pioneers lose their way in the wilder- 
ness. After days of weary trudging and hunger, 
they kneel and pray to God for guidance to food 
and shelter. In the midst of their devotions, a 
scout returns and rudely interrupts them, crying, 
"Get up, boys, stop your prayers; I have found 
the main road, and we are only ten miles from 
town." What should our pious travelers do? 
If they have an ounce of common sense, they will 
jump to their feet, brush the dust from their 
trousers, and follow their deliverer. Should we 
not call them insane, on the other hand, if, ac- 
customed to hunger and thirst, they had come to 
believe prayer and privation the ends of life, and, 
if instead of rising up and accepting God's an- 



164 THE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

swer to their prayers, they should continue to 
grovel and pray on? 

After eighteen centuries of prayer and priva- 
tion, of hunger and thirst, the couriers and 
scouts of the human race have returned, and to 
their kneeling, miserable brothers they cry aloud, 
"Arise, cease your prayers for already they have 
been answered. We have found the road and 
the promised land is near. Hunger and thirst are 
no longer necessary. Let thanksgiving and 
praise to God now take the place of begging pe- 
titions for that which He hath already granted us." 

As true religionists, is it our duty to say to 
these scouts, "Stop, you infidels, you interfere 
with our devotion?" Such a policy is insanity. 
These teachers are not infidels. They are not 
enemies of religion. Otherwise God would not 
have revealed to them His plan for answering 
the prayers of the millions and fulfilling the 
prophecies of past ages. 

We have been praying: "Lead us aright. Show 
us the way to realize Heaven in this world." Hu- 
manity will now stop asking and accept, as a 
child from its father, God's last and greatest gift. 



THE CHURCH AS A FIELD. 165 

The weary travelers of earth will see that the 
privations of centuries are no longer necessary. 
They will stop pleading with Heaven for the 
manna to be had by simply putting forth their 
palms. 

PRISONERS OF THE BASTILE. 
For an explanation of the action of those poor, 
irrational creatures who are so accustomed to pri- 
vation and prayer that when relief comes they 
only continue to pray, failing to recognize that 
their prayers are answered, we can only point to 
the last poor inmates of the French bastile. The 
most prominent and intellectual citizens of France, 
they had been tern from their homes without a 
trial, thrown into dungeons containing not a single 
ray of light, fed there on bread and water from 
year to year until lonely and in torture their 
hair turned prematurely white and their bodies 
withered. When, at the first stroke of that 
most glorious of revolutions, the bastile doors 
were opened, and the soldiers of the people 
broke down the huge iron gates and doors, 
crying aloud in the name of liberty, "You are 
free, you are free, come out long imprisoned 



166 TEE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

brothers," the populace were astounded to 
find that many of the poor, white-haired, white- 
bearded, pale-faced prisoners, instead of walk- 
ing out into the long-wished for sunlight, clutched 
the walls of their cells, clung to their prison floors 
and cried in fear. They had to be torn from 
their gloomy haunts by main force by their res- 
cuers. Their years of trouble, of darkness and 
gloom had destroyed their power to enjoy the 
light of freedom. Many of the brightest intellects 
of France had thus been dimmed. Their souls, 
once afire for freedom, had burned out in despair. 
They had become maniacs. 

So now there are devotees of religion, so inured 
to the gloomy slavery of poverty and injustice, so 
in the habit of praying for relief, that when the 
bold servants of God strike down with their ready 
hammers the prison walls, and freedom's air and 
sun-light stream in, these poor souls are horrified, 
paralyzed by the very light and atmosphere for 
which they have been praying. "Go away," they 
say, and, crying, they clutch their cell walls 
refusing to be free. They, too, have become mani- 
acs. But the majority of the human race will 



THE CHURCH AS A FIELD. 167 

not refuse freedom's balmy breeze or the sun- 
shine of liberty. At the call of the New Democ- 
racy they will throw down their broken chains 
of poverty, leap through their open prison doors, 
and cheer with might and main as the majority 
of the prisoners of the bastile cheered a century 
ago when they were given freedom's light. 
THE COMMANDMENTS GROWN WITH 
THE WORLD. 
If men claim that we are to be forever satisfied 
with the commands, "Thou shalt not steal," and 
"Thou shalt not kill," we will answer that these 
commands have grown, and that under the banner 
of the New Democracy we shall declare in thun- 
der tones to all the world, "thou shalt not be 
killed," "thou shalt not be robbed," and not only 
this but also, "thou shalt not allow thy brethren 
to be killed," and, "thou shalt not allow thy 
brethren to be robbed." These commands have 
developed still further, so that the cry shall go up 
from sea to sea that our present and past systems 
of thievery, robbery and murder shall be swept 
away, that the teaching of the churches against 
thievery, robbery and murder, through all the cen- 



168 THE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

turies, has borne fruit, and that now, not only shall 
the poor, dependent teachers of abstract truth pro- 
claim beween hymns and prayers, "thou shalt not 
steal," and "thou shalt not kill," but that the 
whole people shall Join in one mighty chorus, 
and declare that public thievery, robbery and 
murder must cease from off the earth and that 
our social and political systems shall be made to 
conformed to the teachings of our religion. 

To those who oppose us in the name of religion, 
let our answer be, "We do not fight the church; 
without the church and its teachings for nineteen 
centuries, the New Democracy would have been 
impossible." The New Democracy is an out- 
growth of all religions. Religion has protected 
and kept alive, through the barbarous past, the 
great moral truths that we are now applying to 
actual life. Even if the church or any part of 
the church or priesthood or ministry attempts to 
oppose us, we will simply laugh with God at 
every futile effort to stem the flood, the source of 
which is their own teaching through nineteen cen- 
turies. For the church, or any part of it, to op- 
pose or belittle or criticise the New Democracy, 



THE CHUBCH AS A FIELD. 169 

is for the tree to disclaim its own fruit, for the 
rivers to disown the sea, for the fountain to dry 
up its stream, for the mother to cast aside her 
child. 

The founders and prophets of all the great re- 
ligions taught the principles of justice and 
brotherly love. The New Democracy makes pos- 
sible their realization. 

What nobler work can any man engage in on 
Sunday than the proclaiming in open air or be- 
hind closed doors these eternal truths, or tell of 
the new impulse that is fast taking hold of men to 
weave these truths into the texture of our social 
institutions. 



CHAPTER X. 

ONLY WO PARTIES IN THE WORLD. 

Another of the few foundation truths upon 
which the structure of the world's present 
progress is being reared, a truth that cannot be 
too often told nor too continuously urged, is that 
THERE ARE ONLY TWO PARTIES IN 
THE WORLD. 

One party consists of those who, seeing wrong, 
try to end it; seeing injustice, strive to abolish it; 
and, being told of possible improvements, inves- 
tigate and EXPERIMENT, hoping to attain 
them. 

The other party is made up of those who can- 
not see wrongs when practiced upon others, who 
are blind to injustice for fear of the unjust, and 
who, being told of possible improvements, antag- 
onize their instructors, in defense of the private 
interests of themselves or their masters, that 
might by change be jeopardized. 



172 THE NEW DEMOCBACY. 

One party represents the cause of the people; 
the other the selfishness of kings, nobles and plu- 
tocrats. 

The fight now is not simply a continuation of 
the old fight that has been going on from ancient 
times, but is the world climax, the end of the 
struggle. Those who produce and trade and 
teach, earning their money by honorable exertion, 
are forming all along the line, against those who 
are too lazy to work, too stupid or too proud to 
trade or teach, but who wish to grow rich by ac- 
quiring other people's property. The honest 
masses who believe in law, order and progress, 
are approaching a decisive contest for permanent 
supremacy with the dishonest classes who, in 
order to defend their systems of plunder, utilize 
in their service the combined forces of ignorance, 
superstition, toadyism, lawless cunning and the 
force of arms. 

If the lawless, irresponsible dictators of indus- 
try and commerce are successful, then liberty, con- 
stitutional government and personal security are 
at an end, civilization is derailed into an abyss, 
and retrogression displaces progress through 



ONLY TWO PARTIES IN THE WORLD. 173 

another age of barbarism. Gold becomes the 
only God, and bayonets the only prod to duty. 
The university, the press and the pulpit will all be 
made permanent attachments to the one despotic 
machine which is to control every source of com- 
munication and instruction, and stifle all thought 
and aspiration that does not strengthen the rul- 
ing power. 

On the other hand, the people's victory will end 
class rule forever, and gradually abolish all spe- 
cial privileges and monopolies by means of which 
one man holds an unjust advantage over another. 
The people holding the reins of power will ap- 
ply the best talent, experience and energy pos- 
sessed by man to the establishment of justice, 
order and public achievement. This is the situ- 
ation confronting our country and the world. 
It is the situation as it confronts every individual 
man. The war is universal. There are no non- 
combatants. Everyone is affected by the out- 
come. Each has the power to help decide the 
result. Whether in compliance with or against 
our will, each of us must participate and assist 
one side or the other. 



1 74 THE NE W DEMOCBACY. 

. Which shall it be? The party of the people 
or the party of tyranny. This question presents 
itself alike to the citizen of America and the in- 
habitant of Europe. Since the historic people's 
victory at Chicago, July 6, 1896, the people's 
party in America has taken the name ''REGU- 
LAR DEMOCRATIC." In Germany, France 
and England it is known as the "Social Democ- 
racy;" in the Balkans and Asia Minor it is the 
"Greek;" and in the West Indies, the "Cuban 
Army." 

When once the masses realize that the sam? 
class of adventurers, tax-gatherers and oppres- 
sors of labor who in this country have gotten 
absolute control of the Republican political 
machine, are the present friends, the advisers and 
colleagues of the despots, plutocrats and military 
leaders of Europe, that their families are intermar- 
rying, their interests being pooled, their cause be- 
coming one, their interests identical, all their 
plans and hopes one and inseparable, then will 
it be impossible for designing demagogues to mis- 
lead or confuse them further. When it becomes 
generally understood that the forces of re-action 



ONLY TWO PARTIES IN THE WORLD. 175 

throughout the world are one, then will the com- 
mon people come into closer union and bind 
themselves together as a unit. 

The union of those who profit by tyranny ne- 
cessitates the union of all who believe in liberty. 
The internationalism of millionaires is creating 
an internationalism of the common people. The 
situation is being so simplified that all may com- 
prehend clearly the two forces whose conflict 
extends over the modern world. All minor and 
secondary divisions and issues are swallowed up. 
The international aspect of the problem does not, 
as one might at first suppose, confuse the mind, 
but, on the other hand, simplifies the issue so 
that none can mistake concerning it. Old preju- 
dices, reverence for party names, sectional hatreds, 
sores left by historic feuds, religious differences 
and affiliations with local political machines, in 
which self or friends are interested selfishly, all 
tend to cover up the real issues, when only the 
local end of the fight is studied. 

But, when we learn that the same class that 
induced the governments of Europe and America 
to co-operate with Spanish murderers in starving, 



176 THE NEW DEMOCBACY. 

killing and torturing tens of thousands of our 
patriotic brother Americans in Cuba to protect 
the value of their Spanish bonds and got these 
so-called Christian governments to assist the 
Turk, supply him with arms and drill and general 
his soldiers for the massacre of hundreds of thou- 
sands of defenseless Armenians and Greeks, to 
secure the continued payment of interest on their 
Turkish bonds; that this class is made up of the 
same individual bondholders who are gaining 
control, through syndicates, of our American 
breweries, distilleries, railroads, street car com- 
panies, gas companies and other manufacturing 
and commercial institutions; that they are ever 
ready mercilessly and barbarously, by murder 
or giant fraud, to advance their interests, regard- 
less of duty to humanity, country or to God, all of 
which they deny; and, when we prove that this 
class now controls absolutely the machinery of the 
Republican party in America, and is trying again 
to control Democracy, the masses, in their fury 
against it will, regardless of historic prejudices 
or past or local political affiliations, unite in com- 
mon defense of home and country to stamp it 
out. 



ONLY TWO P ARTIE 8 IN THE WORLD. 177 

THE PARTY OF EXPERIMENT. 
Our enemies say ours is a party of EXPERI- 
MENT. We admit ft. No forward step in the 
world's history, no achievement in science, art, 
literature or politics has ever come but by EX- 
PERIMENT. 

We are not, however, the only party of EX- 
PERIMENT. The plutocrats, who now control 
our country, also believe in EXPERIMENT, 
only their experiments are in the direction of fur- 
ther despoiling the people without adding to pop- 
ular rage, and of tightening their grip upon our 
property, our lives and liberties without inciting 
to rebellion. 

One man experiments with surgeon's knife 
upon the body of another, chloroformed or a 
corpse. But suppose the chloroform ceases to 
act or the corpse proves a case of suspended ani- 
mation, rises up snatches the surgical 
instrument, ties his tormentor to the couch and 
begins to experiment on him. The EXPERI- 
MENT in either case may be equally beneficial to 
science, equally dangerous to the victim. But 
the personal value of the EXPERIMENT to 



178 TEE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

either of the principals depends, in a large 
measure, upon WHETHER HE IS THE EX- 
PERIMENTER OR THE MAN EXPERI- 
MENTED ON. 

The millionaires united are at present experi- 
menting on the people. The records of their dis- 
coveries are doubtless of great value to political 
science but when the unfortunate public, hereto- 
fore thought dead or safely hypnotized, arises and 
with ghastly alacrity, begins to EXPERIMENT 
on its doctors, not only will science be equally 
benefited, but the "corpse" will enjoy the opera- 
tion hugely. 

This outcry on the part of the plutocrats against 
political experimenting means simply that they 
want to do all the experimenting themselves. 

OUR ENEMIES ARE THE INNOVATORS. 

A family, sheltered for many years to their en- 
tire satisfaction by an old homestead, that also 
protected their property, suddenly discovers that 
their silverware is fast disappearing with many 
heirlooms, jewels and valuable papers and 
pieces of furniture. They discuss a plan for 



ONLY TWO PARTIES IN THE WORLD. 179 

changing the locks and, with the aid of a skilled 
mechanic, make an examination of ever} 7 wall, 
floor, door and window with a view to a general 
overhauling and repairs. A neighbor makes se- 
rious objection and in a solemn manner appeals 
to his friends not to interfere with the ancient 
landmarks nor lay an irreverent hand upon the 
old homestead, that served their father so well 
and that sheltered them and protected their prop- 
erty so long. His only object in thus warning his 
friend against dangerous innovation being grate- 
ful reverence for which has been so useful in the 
past. 

Supposing the owner to be possessed of com- 
mon sense, his answer will be : "Yes, my friend, the 
old homestead has served me and my fathers 
well for a long period of years and I had never 
intended to irreverently destroy it. But I have dis- 
covered that some stranger has already laid an 
irreverent hand upon our home and broken the 
locks of our doors and windows. We find that 
he Has cut a hole in the floor of our side closet and 
effected entrances through the roof and the cellar 
window. The home which once protected us 



180 TEE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

serves no longer as a protection, because mutil- 
ated by an intruder. If the house still protected 
us as it did our fathers we should be satisfied; 
but, since others have changed it, we, in self- 
protection, must adapt ourselves to the changed 
conditions. It is not the old house that protected 
our fathers that we are changing, but the new 
house, the changed house, the mutilated house — 
this it is that we wish to renovate and re-adapt, 
so that it may again be made to serve us as did the 
old one. The same outside framework, the 
same old flag-pole, brown front and corner stone 
remain, but many of the foundation stories are 
gone, the strength of the house, its power to 
serve and protect us have been taken away so 
that we are in constant fear of its caving in upon 
us. Therefore, we shall repair it thoroughly or 
else remove to another." 

Our government for many years served the 
people well. Its past is sacred. It protected our 
fathers, made our lives and our fortunes possible 
and we are tempted to give weight to the argu- 
ments of a compatriot when he says to us: 
"Touch not the ancient land-marks; do not lay 



ONLY TWO PARTIES IN THE WOULD. lSi 

irreverent hands on our government; do not seek 
to change its laws or institutions; it has served us 
well and we should show our gratitude by pro- 
tecting it and by opposing innovation." 

In answer, however, we are forced to say that, 
although we have the same flag-pole and flag, the 
same brown front and corner stone, an enemy has 
for years been removing one foundation stone 
after another. He has removed the vital parts 
from the locks of our doors and windows; made 
entrances through the roof, the floor and cellar, 
so that our silver is now disappearing, our jewels 
and our heirlooms are missing, and our liberty, our 
lives and our property are in danger. 

WE ARE NOT THE INNOVATORS. WE 
ARE THE VICTIMS OF INNOVATION. 
We seek to battle against the invaders who have 
mutilated our government and would destroy us. 
We strive to make our government, of which 
now only the shell remains, serve us as it served 
our forefathers, capable of affording us that shel- 
ter and protection, which is the true function of 
government, and which our forefathers intended 
we should have. 



182 THE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

TWO GOVERNMENTS IN MORTAL COM- 
BAT. 

We have two distinct governments in our 
country, whose interests are antagonistic and irre- 
concilable. One government is the United States ; 
the other, the United Trusts and Syndicates. The 
former is democratic; the other despotic. This 
inner-treasonable despotism controls our industry, 
commerce and means of life and pleasure. It is 
using the United States government as a machine 
to enforce its decrees and extend its dominion, 
hoping soon to abolish the last vestige of popular 
rule. It is world-wide in its extent, and only 
uses local and national governments as means of 
power. 

The United States enacts laws openly. The 
United trusts and syndicates enacts laws 
secretly. Disobedience to our state laws is pun- 
ished only after a public trial, but the merchant 
who breaks a trust law is ruined without a trial, 
the laborer who ignores it is secretly blacklisted; 
the minister who defies it is forced out of the 
church, and the lawyer disregarding it loses his 
profitable practice. The nation enacts a law and 



ONLY TWO PARTIES IN THE WORLD. 183 

the trust officers laugh at it so far as it applies to 
them, and then, by gaining control of the law- 
enforcing power, use this law as an additional club 
in the subjugation of their victims. 

When the people attempt to defeat a new ag- 
gression on the part of the trusts by carrying out 
the plan of some renowned thinker, known to be 
uninfluenced by special interests, the emissaries 
of the trusts scatter the people by crying: "EX- 
PERIMENT." "An untried and Utopian 
scheme," "Innovators." While the patriots argue 
as to whether their plan is really an EXPERI- 
MENT, the enemy captures a new position. 

The United Trusts and Syndicates, by experi- 
menting constantly and pushing forward all along 
the line and at the same time by convincing the 
United States not to EXPERIMENT, succeeds 
in approaching the same relation to its rival gov- 
ernment that a live ant sustains to a dead worm. 
By incessant and fearless activity, and by using 
our constitution, traditions and flag as a blind, this 
irresponsible despotism is fast nearing the time 
when it hopes to throw off its mask and publicly 
usurp supreme power. Not a day passes but these 



184 THE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

organized conspirators try some new EXPERI- 
MENT, attempt some new aggression never 
dared before, attack some nearer outpost of the 
people's liberties heretofore thought impregnable. 
Often these EXPERIMENTS fail. The people 
are sometimes bull-headed, and repulse the attack 
with loss to the United Trusts and Syndicates. 
But failing once, twice or a hundred times, do 
they cease to EXPERIMENT? Even though 
they lose millions in attempting some audacious 
act, do they therefore refuse to attempt another act 
equally bold? Never. They see clearly that all 
enterprise, all progress, all victory, all increase in 
power and dominion, result only from repeated 
EXPERIMENTS. The boldest of all EXPERI- 
MENTS was the hatching of the conspiracy that 
gave their present organization birth. EXPERI- 
MENT gave them all they have. They live and 
grow by it. To stop EXPERIMENT is to stop 
action, for the modern world is a new world and 
in it there are no tried and beaten paths. The 
floods and glaciers of innovation have carried 
away the ancient landmarks, and by raising new 
barriers and structures largely shut off from all 



ONLT TWO PARTIES IN THE WORLD. 185 

progressive peoples, even the kindly rays from the 
lamp- of experience. Not agitators, but science 
and invention, have pushed us away from the an- 
cient world, with its well-worn roads and light- 
houses, and where we walk now Human feet never 
trod before. The light from our foreheads is 
our only lamp, and eternal truth our only guide, 
prefer to EXPERIMENT, OR TO BE EXPERI- 
MENTED ON; TO BE THE SURGEON, OR 
THE CORPSE. 

The Democratic party in power in 1900 con- 
trolled by the common people will, without doubt, 
EXPERIMENT boldly. It will lead our govern- 
ment into new and untried ways, as our enemies 
very clearly and very truthfully predict. It will, 
without doubt, commit blunders and make mis- 
takes The one thing that above all and in spite 
of all it is pledged to do, is to arouse the United 
States government from its paralysis, stupor and 
corpse-like state of being experimented on, and 
declare that whatever the EXPERIMENTS of 
the future, instead of being made ON THE 
UNITED STATES, THEY SHALL BE 
MADE BY THE UNITED STATES. 



186 THE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

The important question for the citizens of the 
United States to answer is simply this: Do you 
prefer to EXPERIMENT, or to be experimented 
on; to be the surgeon, or the corpse? 

When the victimized people declare their inde- 
pendence, through their own government, of the 
despotism of the trusts, it will necessarily be an 
EXPERIMENT. 

Every time General Grant ordered an attack on 
the forces defending negro slavery, he tried an 
EXPERIMENT. Never could he tell exactly 
what the result would be. There might be more 
dead Union men than Confederates, or there 
might possibly be more dead Confederates than 
Union men. The one thing of which he was cer- 
tain, however, was that his duty consisted in go- 
ing ahead, and, when defeated, he gathered his 
troops together anal tried again. He knew that, 
if followed long enough, his plan would crush the 
Confederacy. 

So each attack on the white slave power to-day 
is an EXPERIMENT. We cannot at any time 
foretell the immediate result. An attack on a 
special monopoly may fail. Many times we may 



ONLY TWO PARTIES IN THE WORLD. 187 

be repulsed with loss, but by constantly renewing 
the attack and continuing to press forward we 
shall eventually triumph. During the late war, 
the southern states defended black slavery. They 
lost. Black slavery was abolished. To-day, the 
southern states, dominated by the common peo- 
ple, have espoused the cause of liberty and to the 
oppressors of the North and East they say, 
"White slavery also must be destroyed." 

Both parties are parties of EXPERIMENT. 
The only difference is that we avow ours openly 
and write them in our platform, while the experi- 
ments and aggressions of the Republican party 
are planned in secret and executed in dark cor- 
ners where only traitors and adventurers are al- 
lowed admittance. 

To hesitate and refuse to EXPERIMENT is to 
tie our hands and remain inactive, while our ene- 
mies harass us, rob us, and assault us from all 
directions. It is as important to weaken the 
enemy as it is to strengthen your own forces. 
Therefore, when by an extensive literature the 
money-power instil] in the people a horror of 



188 TEE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

EXPERIMENT, they palsy their limbs and in- 
capacitate them for defense. 

Therefore, the Democratic Volunteers will 
frankly admit the charge that they favor EX- 
PERIMENT and will boldly proclaim that 
EXPERIMENT is one of the foundation stones 
of their creed. By ceaseless and tireless repeti- 
tion in every community of our nation we will ask 
the people to begin to EXPERIMENT on their 
own account, instead of permitting EXPERI- 
MENT to longer remain a monopoly in the hands 
of those who continually decry it. We will ask 
them to decide whether they will longer remain 
objects of EXPERIMENT, or, by government 
action, begin to EXPERIMENT on their perse- 
cutors. 



CHAPTER XL 

^WITNESSES FOR PLUTOCRACY DIS- 
CREDITED. 

When the nature of the present world conflict 
is understood, those who favor the people's cause 
will cease to receive any further instruction or 
advice whatever from their enemies or the allies 
or agents of their enemies. 

If America declared open war upon Britain 
should we put the slightest confidence in any 
statement, emanating from English sources as to 
the best line of attack? And, if a coterie of young 
Britishers were to enter our camp and advise our 
soldiers to open fire in a northward direction, 
should we not rather suspect an attack from the 
enemy on the south? Is it not a rule in war al- 
ways to fire in the direction opposite to that ad- 
vised by your enemies? In all business and other 
practical affairs of life is it not universally recog- 

*For part of this chapter credit is due to Carl Vrooman. 



190 TEE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

nized as the extreme of folly to accept as facts 
the statements of those who may profit by our dis- 
comfiture? 

Most assuredly! And it is time for the mer- 
chants and workingmen of America to apply to 
their political struggle these simple maxims so 
well established elsewhere. 

WORTHLESS TESTIMONY. 
Imagine a courtroom filled with spectators and 
a group of culprits being tried for wholesale theft. 
The strongest evidence has been produced by 
both the prosecution and defense and the result 
is in doubt. Anxious crowds are waiting in sus- 
pense for some decisive stroke that shall give an 
advantage to one side or the other. The counsel 
for the defense arises and plays his last card by an 
eloquent appeal in behalf of the prisoners, basing 
his plea entirely on the superiority of his wit- 
nesses. He shows that they stand much higher 
in the community than the witnesses for the pros- 
ecution, who are poor, untutored countrymen. 
"My witnesses," says he, "include the leading men 
in your community — your parson, the principal 



PLUTOCRATIC WITNESSES DISCREDITED. 191 

of your high school, and the editor of your paper. 
Yours are mere yahoos and ignoramuses, not ca- 
pable of exercising judgment in such a case as 
this." A murmur of assent passes around the 
room. There is a cheer of confirmation, and the 
jurors nod their heads significantly. 

The prosecuting attorney, instead of making a 
speech, plays his last card by taking the jury to 
the stable, where they discover that the horse on 
which the teacher rode to court is one of those 
stolen from Farmer Hayseed's stable, and further 
he proves that the suit of clothes worn by the 
parson on the witness stand was made of the very 
piece of woolen goods taken from the country 
storekeeper, and that the coins that fill the purse 
of the respected editor are the same identical 
marked coins accumulated by Widow Jones for 
her old age and taken from her money drawer on 
the night of the crime in question. No speeches, 
no arguments are necessary after this. The 
jurors purge their memories of the testimony for 
the defense, and the culprits are sent to prison. 

In the great case of 'The People versus Mon- 
opoly," now being tried at the bar of Public 



192 THE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

Opinion, the defense, beaten upon every other 
point, bases its last plea upon the superiority of 
its witnesses. It is claimed that the authorities on 
finance, the press and the pulpit are witnesses 
in defense of Monopoly. We acknowledge this, 
and in answer wish only to take the jury, who are 
to decide this case, to the homes of these wit- 
nesses, where they can see for themselves that 
they are sharers in the plunder that has been taken 
from the plaintiffs. 

THE PRESS. 
The first important witness in behalf of the de- 
fense is the great metropolitan press, the peculiar 
and special product of the dying years of the 
present century. 

Now, the modern newspaper is a corporation, 
formed for the one purpose of paying dividends 
to stockholders. In order to make money it must 
serve the people who have money, for now all the 
profits of the great dailies are derived from the 
sale of space in their columns, the receipts for the 
sale of papers not covering expenses. The busi- 
ness manager, with a few exceptions, controls the 
editorial department and dictates all policies. So 



PLUTOCRATIC WITNESSES DISCREDITED. 193 

we poor wayfarers, hungry for information con- 
cerning some important interest, seize upon a 
learned editorial in a great metropolitan daily, and 
while we think we are being instructed by the 
weighty opinion of some friendly and scholarly 
writer, we are in fact reading THE PAID AD- 
VERTISEMENT of our enemies, placed in the 
paper to confuse us. When, in the news depart- 
ment, we read a speech or an interview, it is often 
so garbled that the meaning is quite changed. 
And what we consider to be a simple statement of 
fact is often a doctored narrative, containing ficti- 
tious figures, and printed for the sole purpose of 
misleading the public. 

The attempt of the gold press to array the agri- 
cultural producers against the city laborers, and 
the mechanics against the agriculturists is cruel 
and deliberate. And this power to deceive and 
mislead carries with it the power of life or death. 
Suppose I were to go to Mr. Jones and tell him 
that Mr. Smith had declared to me that he was 
going to shoot him on sight, and that I had seen 
him purchase a revolver for that purpose; and 
then I should go to Mr. Smith and tell him that 



194 THE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

his friend Jones had just armed himself to the 
teeth for the purpose of killing him, stating that I 
had heard him swear and curse and declare be- 
fore heaven that Smith should not live another 
day. Now, suppose these two neighbors, hereto- 
fore warm friends, were to approach each other, 
and Smith, as a precaution, would reach his hand 
toward his hip-pocket, and Jones, in order to save 
his life, would pull out his weapon and fire, both 
men shooting each other at the same time. 

The result would be TWO DEAD FOOLS, 
the victims of ONE LIVE LIAR. 

The power to deceive great masses of people by 
simultaneous and premeditated conspiracy on the 
part of the papers owned by monopoly, carries 
with it the power to weaken the masses by divid- 
ing them in a struggle over false issues; and while 
they fight among themselves, to rob them and 
legislate their children into slavery. 

Here are the words of the great journalist, John 

Swinton, before the New York Press Association, 

in response to a toast, "The Independent Press:" 

"There is no such thing in America as an indepen- 
dent Press, unless it is in the country towns. You 



PLUTOCRATIC WITNESSES DISCREDITED. 195 

know it and I know it. There is not one of yon 
who dare express an honest opinion; if yon express it, 
you know beforehand that it would never appear in 
print. I am paid one hundred and fifty dollars a 
week for keeping my honest opinions out of the paper 
I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar 
salaries for similar things. If I should permit honest 
opinions to be printed in one issue of my paper, like 
Othello, before twenty-four hours my occupation 
would be gone. Any man who would be so foolish 
as to write honest opinions would be out on the street 
hunting for another job. The business of the New 
York journalist is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, 
to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon, 
and to sell his country and race for his daily bread, 
or for about the same thing — his salary. You know 
this, and I know it; and what foolery to be toasting 
an 'Independent Press.' We are tools and the vas- 
sals of rich men behind the scenes. We are jumping 
jacks; they pull the strings and we dance. Our time, 
our talents, our lives, our possibilities, all are prop- 
erty of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes." 

In the case of "The American People versus 
the Banks and Trusts," we have found, by per- 
sonal examination, as also by the confession of a 
member of the family, John Swinton, that the 
money which inflates the purse of the prominent 
editorial witness consists of the marked coins that 
made up a portion of the booty in question. No 
sane juror will believe the testimony of such a 
witness. 



196 THE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

CLERGY NEEDS SYMPATHY, NOT 
BLAME. 

It is also claimed that God's ministry has 
offered its testimony in behalf of the defense. It 
is not my purpose to say anything against the 
clergy, because if there is an abused and ill-treated 
class of men on the face of the earth to-day, who 
need pity and prayer and succor, it is the men 
who have dedicated their lives to the Christ who 
was killed by the rich of His time, and who are 
now dependent for their living, their children's 
food and their wives' clothing, upon the blended 
piety and pride, the virtues and vanities of the rich 
of to-day. 

In all that inconsistent barbarism, which we call 
civilization, there is no man who needs sympathy 
so much and deserves blame so little as he who 
is attempting at the same time to preach for God 
and to get his living from God's enemies, to build 
monuments to the Christ who lived and died for 
the poor, and gain the material and cost of these 
monuments by flattering those who are grinding 
the faces of the poor. 



PLUTOCRATIC WITNESSES DISCREDITED. 197 

Many clergymen have told me how their hearts 
have bled for the victims of social injustice; how 
in anguish they have wept over the piteous cries 
for help uttered by their dying brothers and sisters 
in Jesus Christ; how, bursting with indignation, 
they have longed to strike a blow against the 
brutality that crushes Christ's little ones in order 
to grind from their bones and blood colossal and 
unnatural fortunes. But they said, "We must 
conceal our tears and swallow our indignation, 
though it chokes us. We dare not speak out — 
we could neither destroy the tyrant nor save the 
victims. We would only succeed in dragging 
down our own wives and little ones into that dark 
stream of poverty, from which those who have 
once fallen in can never hope to rise. First of all, 
we must live — and then do what little we can 
to temper the reign of injustice and oppression. 
The overthrow and destruction of this system of 
injustice rests upon the shoulders of God and the 
common people." 

I would ask the workmen of the country who 
are rapidly leaving the churches not to judge the 
clergy harshly, because the majority are dumb in 



198 THE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

your behalf and because a few openly and blat- 
antly champion the cause of the oppressors. 

But I must also ask you to place no confi- 
dence in their testimony in this political trial, for 
their lips often utter words their hearts fain would 
withhold, and they often pray for success to the 
banner for which they cannot fight. 

Let us not condemn them because they are 
bound with chains of dependence, but let us 
rather include them among those whom we shall 
liberate when we establish a POLITICAL SYS- 
TEM WHICH SHALL SET ALL MEN 
FREE. 

In the case of "The American People versus the 
Money Lending and Bondholding Class," we 
find that the long, flowing garb of the ministerial 
witness, that at first inspired our confidence in his 
testimony, because of the holy office it suggested, 
is made of the very cloth, a part of the plunder, 
the disapperance of which is the basis of the pres- 
ent trial. The testimony of such a witness, ca- 
joled, terrorized, and a sharer in the booty taken, 
is also without value. 



PLUTOCRATIC WITNESSES DISCREDITED. 199 

THE TESTIMONY OF THE COLLEGE 
AUTHORITIES. 

Now, as to the college professors: From the 
earliest times down to the present day, learning 
has been fostered, patronized and supported by 
wealth. The kings and nobility of various times 
and nations, too stupid or lazy to acquire distinc- 
tion in the field of scholarship themselves, have 
vied with each other in gathering around them 
the greatest scholars, musicians, poets and min- 
strels, as well as the greatest athletes, the most 
beautiful and voluptuous women, the fastest 
horses, and the most interesting curios of every 
description. Some of the patrons of learning and 
art have been really serious in their devotion to 
the beautiful and true. It is, perhaps, one of the 
greatest encomiums that we can pronounce upon 
the wealth of the world, that in all ages it has 
supported learning as the stalk supports the 
flower. This condition of affairs has not existed, 
however, without causing an undesirable depend- 
ence on the part of the beneficiaries. 

Who has passed through the great art galler- 
ies o? the Louvre at Paris, and beheld the acres 



200 THE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

of canvas, covered with the work of the immortal 
Rubens, without being filled with anger and dis- 
gust as he thought of the genius and years of toil 
which, instead of being devoted to conceiving and 
executing new masterpieces to delight and inspire 
all future ages, were applied to daubing the vain 
and cruel countenance and the unattractive per- 
son of the patroness who gave him his bread? 

The first and greatest universities in this land 
were founded, have been built up, and are at 
present supported by the bequests and donations, 
the gratuitous contributions of the rich. The 
vast undying benefits that have flowed from this 
wealth, which have been devoted to learning, 
ancient and modern, cannot easily be overesti- 
mated. What the world would have been with- 
out the enlightenment which has come from this 
source it is not easy to imagine. We should hold 
in high esteem the solitary student who, in past 
ages and to-day, gropes his silent, difficult way 
towards those hidden truths in science, in history 
or in art which will one day enlighten and beautify 
the world. We should be lovers of all that is 
beautiful, and all that is true, and all that is lov- 



PLUTOCRATIC WITNESSES DISCREDITED. 201 

able in this great world of ours. Music, painting 
and sculpture, the sciences, literature and history, 
should be to all sources both of inspiration and of 
light. With all our hearts let us welcome these 
products of man's talent and genius. 

The historian is the hinge linking the present to 
the past. His office is not only a useful, but a 
sacred one. Scholarship is like womanhood — 
one of the most holy and sacred things in the 
world. But, like womanhood, when prostituted, 
it becomes the most debased. He who muddies 
with error and personal prejudice the fountain of 
pure truth is an enemy to his race. But let us 
not attempt to blame nor censure individuals. 
We know that wealth has been the friend of 
learning; that in all times past those who have 
devoted their time to the pursuit of truth or 
beauty have been dependent upon the support of 
the rich and powerful. You say that if wealth 
has been the friend of learning, it is only natural 
that learning should be the friend of wealth. 
Yes, this is exactly the fact in the case. Learn- 
ing is the friend of wealth for two reasons: 
One, because she feels grateful for past favors; 



202 THE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

the other, and greater, because she is hopeful for 
favors to come. 

It is well known in educational circles that any 
college found propagating "heresies" like "free 
silver" or government ownership of the rail- 
roads" — in other words, any institution which 
does not distort and curtail its teachings so as to 
bias the student in favor of the single gold stand- 
ard and the eternal reign of monopoly — will be" 
cut off without a dollar by plutocracy and doomed 
to a future of comparative impotence and useless- 
ness for lack of funds. 

THE RESULT. 

What is the result? The president of a large 
private university, knowing that his reputation 
for success or failure depends upon the growth of 
his university as compared with that of neighbor- 
ing universities, continually trims his sails to se- 
cure favors of those who have money to dispense. 
It is a common thing for a college president to 
make what he calls a "begging tour." He en- 
deavors to show to those who are supposed to 
have money to bestow that his university is in 
great need, and can make the best possible use 



PLUTOCRATIC WITNESSES DISCREDITED. 203 

of "sound" money in propagating "sound ideas." 
A good illustration of this is the tour which 
Brooker Washington, the famous colored orator, 
the President of the Tuskegee Institute, made 
in 1896, through the North and East He is a 
man of intellectual power. He is, no doubt, thor- 
oughly devoted to the enlightenment of his race ; 
but the way he flatters and cajoles the rich, ad- 
vocates the gold standard, overlooks and keeps 
silent about their corruption and crimes, and as- 
sents to their plans for further aggrandizement, is 
a lesson which every patriot can study with 
profit. He "has become a pet and fad among the 
wealthy classes of New York and New England. 
Even Harvard in 1896 conferred upon him an 
honorary degree. He has doubtless gotten heavy 
endowments for his college, but he has had to 
fawn and flatter and stultify his manhood to do it. 
And he has given a striking example of what al- 
most every college president must do to a greater 
or less extent. 

The fact is, that PRIVATE UNIVERSI- 
TIES, DEPENDING AS THEY DO UPON 
THE CHARITY AND CONSCIENCE 



204 TEE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

MONEY OF THE RICH FOR SUPPORT 
AND GROWTH, LIKE ALL THOSE WHO 
LIVE BY CHARITY, HAVE ACQUIRED 
THE FAWNING SPIRIT OF SERVITUDE 
AND DEPENDENCE, AND FAITHFULLY 
LICK THE HAND THAT FEEDS THEM. 
"Verily the ox knoweth his master's crib/' 

Many college presidents dare not use any but 
"orthodox" gold standard text-books, and pro- 
fessors who dissent from the views of these books 
are forced to swallow their own opinions and 
propagate error. 

Many of "our great authorities" are mere syco- 
phants of wealth, creatures of the millionaire, 
placed by him in the same category as his musi- 
cian, his ballet dancer or chaplain, all valuable 
dependents. The money lord of creation often 
builds the college (Chicago University, for ex- 
ample), places the poor book-worm in the position 
that makes him a "recognized authority," and the 
"authority" must dish up statistics as a cook 
dishes up his delicacies to suit the taste of his 
master. If he refuses he loses his job, and is no 
longer a "recognized authority." 



PLUTOCRATIC WITNESSES DISCREDITED. 205 

Young men are not only taught in many in- 
stances that the rights of monopoly and money 
are more sacred than the rights of men and 
women, but are shown frequently that if they 
want to make a success in life, and be an honor to 
their family and their college they must ally 
themselves with the powerful corporations and 
trusts and keep their skirts clear of all popular 
and reform movements. 

The recent action of the Yale students who 
brutally attempted to insult the honored guest of 
their city, Mr. Wm. J. Bryan, is not without sig- 
nificance. 

The authorities and the respectable element 
among the students were no doubt, deeply humili- 
ated by such a disgrace. Yet it is fairly plain that 
the dogmatic, uncharitable and violent opposition 
to Free Silver indulged in by the professors, has 
contributed its part toward causing this exhibition 
of anarchy and puppyism. 

There is a wide distinction however, between 
professors and professors. 

There are numerous truly great men who are 
aristocrats at heart, who love luxury and culture 



206 THE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

and refinement, whose friends are principally 
among the rich, whose sympathies are with the 
rich, and whose interests in life are bound up with 
the prosperity of the wealthy classes. These men 
oppose popular rights as conscientiously as did 
the old Feudal Lords. They all oppose the New 
Democracy. 

There are many others — men of splendid intel- 
lect, but utterly without principle — who are mere 
dishonest, mercenary tools of the highest bidder, 
willing to distort and manufacture history, tamper 
with statistics, and lie like "shyster lawyers." 

As, for instance, the learned professor of the 
Chicago University, who declared with brazen 
effrontery that whatever might be charged against 
Mr. Rockefeller of the Standard Oil Trust, no one 
could say that he had accumulated his millions 
in any way that interfered with the accumulations 
of others.* 

Again there are a few university "authorities" 
who, at the risk of their living and the success of 



*See detailed account of the lawless Anarchistic methods used by Stan- 
dard Oil Trust to destroy competitors in "Wealth Against Commonwealth" 
by H. . LI 



PLUTOCRATIC WITNESSES DISCREDITED. 207 

the institutions they represent, have told the truth 
fearlessly. They oppose monopoly and the gold 
standard. But their testimony is buried beneath 
the overwhelming mass of prejudice, sophistry 
and misinformation supplied by their colleagues. 

Very distinct from any of these classes is that 
swarm of cowardly pusillanimous book-worms, 
who, as underlings in the large universities, and as 
full-fledged professors in the small colleges, re- 
tail at second-hand with stupid pertinacity and 
pig-headed bitterness, all the errors of the "author- 
ities," together with new ones of their own special 
brew. 

It is by the prejudiced and purchased testimony 
of such men as these that the monopolies of the 
country try to prove that empty stomachs are full, 
bare backs clothed, and that a constantly grow- 
ing and appreciating dollar is an honest one. It 
is with such untrustworthy witnesses that they at- 
tempt to prove to us that the men who have stolen 
our property are more honest than we. 

The teacher witness for the defense may be 
more "respectable and learned" than the witnesses 
of the prosecution, but when we see that the uni- 



208 THE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

versities are built and professors' salaries paid 
from the booty wrung from the people — in other 
words, ''that the teacher rides to court on one of 
the very horses taken from Farmer Hayseed's 
stable" it does not take us long to decide that this 
testimony is misleading and false. 

Therefore, the workmen, merchants and tax- 
payers who compose the jury, which is to hand in 
its verdict in 1900, must refuse to consider the 
testimony of these collegiate, pulpit and editorial 
witnesses, who are proven to be sharers in the 
tribute forced from the people by that gigantic 
and almost sublime system of world exploitation 
carried on scientifically and persistently by those 
powerful "trusts" which have cornered the world's 
gold and monopolized nearly every necessity and 
comfort of life. 

The pivotal point in this campaign is the ques- 
tion of the reliability of witnesses. Not only do 
opinions differ, but the history, statistics, and 
facts, advanced by the defenders of monopoly and 
the gold standard contradict the history, statistics 
and facts discovered by the champions of the 
people. There can be only one truthful history of 



PLUTOCRATIC WITNESSES DISCREDITED. 209 

the crime of seventy-three, and the seventy-three 
other crimes of the shirkers against the workers. 
Figures do not lie. Only one set of statistics, as 
to the rise in the value of the gold dollar, can pos- 
sibly be correct. Facts do not conflict. When 
men contradict each other upon a question of fact, 
one side is wrong. 

Whose history and statistics are we to believe 
in this campaign? 

Are we to believe the interested, prejudiced, 
purchased witnesses of corrupt wealth, or are we 
to believe the testimony of the witnesses of the 
people — men who have sacrificed and suffered in 
order to tell the truth. 

It is because the classes who have the advant- 
ages of culture and leisure, always care more for 
their own comforts than for truth and justice, that 
these problems, my reader, must be worked out, 
by the millions made of the same identical com- 
mon mud that you and I are. 

As William E. Gladstone has said, all the re- 
forms brought about in England during the last 
century, and of which all her citizens now boast, 
'were at first merely impossible ideals in the 



210 THE XEW DEMOCRACY. 

minds of the ignorant and fanatical poor/' and 
were carried through by the working people "in 
opposition to the cultured and leisure class." 

It is because those who possess the power and 
the learning to lead mankind aright have always 
proven recreant to the trust imposed upon them, 
that God, in directing the course of human his- 
tory, has invariably swept this class aside and ac- 
cepted as His instruments the poor, the simple- 
minded and uncorrupted. From the birth of the 
primitive church among the poor fishermen of 
Galilee to the abolition of chattel slavery by an 
agitation instituted by social and political out- 
casts, the hand of God moving in the world has 
invariably brushed aside the rich and powerful 
with the intellectual parasites that swarm about 
them, and in building nations, religions, or insti- 
tuting great reforms, has uniformly chosen the 
normal, healthy material at the base of society still 
uncorrupted by luxury. 



CHAPTER XII. 
VOTE YOURSELVES RICH. 

Those who have been voted rich, not by their 
own votes, but by our votes,, the votes of the 
common people, are now engaged in proving to 
us THAT WHAT WE HAVE ALREADY 
DONE FOR THEM WE CAN BY NO POS- 
SIBLE MEANS DO FOR OURSELVES. 

Having accumulated immense fortunes by 
means of vote enacted legislation, THEY 
PREACH TO US THE UTTER FOLLY OF 
OUR HOPING FOR ANY GAIN FROM 
THE SAME SOURCE. 

So interested are they in our proper economic 
education, that they are willing to supply both 
text-books and teachers. They love learning and 
from purely philanthropic motives seek to make 
us wise. 

But what is their wisdom so willingly imparted? 
From what follies are they so anxious to guard 
us? 



212 TEE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

TO VOTE OUR ENEMIES RICH: THIS 
IS WISDOM. 

TO ATTEMPT TO VOTE OURSELVES 
RICH: DANGEROUS FOLLY. 

Their science teaches that IT IS IMPOS- 
SIBLE FOR THE INSTRUMENT WHICH 
IS THE SOURCE OF THEIR WEALTH TO 
BE OF ANY EFFECT IN BEHALF OF 
THOSE WHO WIELD THE INSTRUMENT. 
Text-book in hand they say to the people, "It 
is impossible for you to vote yourselves rich." 

Strictly speaking, it is unnecessary for the peo- 
ple to "vote themselves rich." WE, THE PEO- 
PLE, ARE ALREADY RICH. We are rich by 
the gift of nature and the will of God. Each 
scientific discovery and invention, wrung by. toil, 
genius and martyrdom from the strange earth 
and firmament that greeted primeval man, has 
added to our riches. We are now rich, but are 
debarred by force from the possession of our own. 
We are heirs, not only to the riches of the earth 
as originally created, but to all those opportunities 
for utilizing these natural treasures, resulting 
from the accumulated knowledge and skill of the 



VOTE YOURSELVES RICH. 213 

centuries. But we are kept from our inheritance. 

We have been deprived of our wealth by vote- 
enacted legislation, and it is vote-enacted legisla- 
tion that will again give us possession. 

Our enemies say contemptuously that govern- 
ment can no more increase wages by legislation 
than it can increase the size of your foot or the 
length of your arm, for the increase or decrease in 
both cases is governed wholly by natural law. 

"Let the poor," they say, "stop agitating and 
hoping to become prosperous through legisla- 
tion, and instead let every man go to work build- 
ing his own home and fortune, and all will be 
well." 

"The Government cannot legislate a single dol- 
lar into existence." 

"The remedies for poverty are industry, frugal- 
ity and temperance." 

These are the things they say. But suppose 
we watch their acts instead of listening to their 
words. Then we learn that, while for us they 
point in one direction to the road that leads to 
fortune they seek this road themselves by going 
the opposite way. We, who have followed their 



214 THE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

advice, have been impoverished; they, who imi- 
tated their acts, have been enriched. 
POTATOES AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 

I ride to market with a load of potatoes, the re- 
sult of sweat and labor for half a year. A ruf- 
fian knocks me off my wagon, takes my seat and 
drives away. 

Questions: Shall I ask a policeman to help me 
catch the despoiler, or shall I "cease agitating and 
go to work?" Shall I arm myself and, with the 
help of friends, take back my own, or shall 1 
return to the farm and "practice industry, frug- 
ality and temperance?" Is it nobler, manlier, 
more courageous of me to get possession of my 
potatoes by fighting, or, forsaking them, to go to 
work and raise another crop for the next thief? 

Honest and contented labor under these cir- 
cumstances is dishonorable. 

WHEN A MAN IS ROBBED, THE WAY 
FOR HIM TO GET MONEY IS NOT TO 
WORK FOR IT BUT TO FIGHT FOR IT. 
To tell a man that he cannot possibly make any 
money by talking nor get any potatoes by agitat- 
ing police officers is absolutely true, PRO- 



VOTE YOURSELVES RICH. 215 

VIDED, the man has been loafing all year and 
has not been robbed of his crop. But these de- 
monstrations of the economists go into the waste 
basket, when the fact is made plain that the. man, 
seeking by government aid to get potatoes, has 
already earned them by hard labor, but is de- 
prived of them by the criminal act of another. 
Under such circumstances, the man who, instead 
of fighting and pursuing, applies himself to hon- 
est toil, is a coward. 

Men who, wrongfully deprived of their prop- 
erty, go to work to earn more, thus providing 
additional booty for their despoilers, are unworthy 
a better fate. Honor impels a true man to fight, 
not work, when a wrong is suffered either by 
himself or friends. 

To quietly plow while another eats the result 
of last year's plowing, to contentedly plant while 
another reaps, to submissively bow one's head 
beneath a yoke and receive the kicks and jeers 
and sneers of the drivers, are not the acts of a 
man nor the duties of a citizen, but the follies of 
an ass. When a true man, after gathering his 
harvest, sees his product taken by another, he 



216 THE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

mounts his horse, before planting again, and with 
pitchfork, shotgun or other efficient weapon, 
starts in hot pursuit. He seeks to recover last 
year's product before trying to raise another crop. 

Therefore, when government-made millionaires 
try to persuade the working people, small tax- 
payers and business men to stop meddling with 
politics and instead to work harder in the hope of 
laying by something for old age, they really desire 
them to cease defending their property and to 
continue creating more for others to enjoy. 

The learned professor teaches that "the govern- 
ment cannot legislate into being a single dollar, 
nor a dollar's worth of wealth." From this pre- 
mise, he reasons that a dollar legislated into one 
man's pocket must necessarily be legislated out of 
another man's pocket. He then concludes that 
the poor cannot legislate themselves comfortable 
without to the extent of their gain depriving an- 
other class of their earnings. 

If my neighbor accompanied me to market with 
a load of potatoes and I were to ask a policeman 
to help me take his load from him, the econo- 
mists words would apply. The government, 



TOTE YOURSELVES RICH. 217 

through its agent, the policeman, could not 
double my wealth without robbing my neighbor. 
But this is not the situation. I came alone. A 
stranger assaulted me and took both wagon and 
potatoes, leaving me very poor. Now, in spite 
of the professor's words, the state, in the person of 
its officer, can abolish my poverty and give me a 
wagon filled with potatoes without doing in- 
justice to any one else. I can be made happy 
without depriving any other being of what he has 
earned, and I do not ask the state to legislate into 
existence a single potato. I simply ask that the 
potatoes already existing as the result of my 
labor be taken from the highwayman and re- 
turned to their rightful owner. 

This is what the masses ask. Not that the gov- 
ernment give them anything produced by others, 
not that the government attempt to create any- 
thing independent of the labor of its citizens, but 
that it return to them their own. We demand the 
capture of the highwayman, monopoly, and that 
the opportunities taken from us by him be re- 
stored to us. 1 

i When a monopoly becomes a government monopoly, its nature 
changes entirety, and all that was objectionable disappears. The evil 



218 THE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

We not only demand but we are actually organ- 
izing for the pursuit. The Democratic Volun- 
teers are superintending the preliminaries and in 
1900 law and order are to be established, the ad- 
venturers suppressed, and restoration made. The 
issuance of the nation's money, now a private 
monopoly, controlled by bankers, will again be 
made a function of government, and the people 
will be permitted to exchange their products with- 
out paying revenue to their enemies for the means 
of exchange, which is their own creation. Other 
wrongs will be righted with equal facility. 

Each victim, however, must be taught that his 
vote is both horse and hound for pursuing, and 
both gun and rope for punishing and reclaiming 
Our vote is our one weapon, our one means of 
defense, and source of power. 

The value of legislative control to our enemies 

pertaining to a monopoly is its exclusiveness. When private monopoly 
becmes government monopoly, it is ne longer exclusive, for the whole 
people enjoy its benefits alike. Unity of administration is not an evil if 
the resulting benefits are shared by all. The only possible way to de- 
stroy the great monopolies is to convert them into government functions, 
and administer them as the post office, the army, navy, weather service, 
the public schools and parks are now managed. There is no other way 
to destroy our new industrial despotism. 

Read "Socialism and Social Reform," by Prof. R. T. Ely; also 
"Wealth against Commonwealth," by H. D. Lloyd. 



VOTE YOURSELVES RICH. 219 

is shown by the desperation with which they 
oppose any effort on the part of the people to re- 
cover it They know it to be the true creator 
of their fortunes, and they look to it alone for 
future "fruits of labor" and "rewards of genius." 

We are rich, but we have been ousted from our 
patrimony. How shall we recover it? By the 
same means through which we lost it, namely, 
legislation. The oppressions that curse man are 
all entrenched in, and owe their power to, legisla- 
tion. If we are. to be freed from them, it will be 
by legislation. In primitive times, government 
was openly, frankly exercised for the enrichment 
of a class at the expense of the mass. For ages 
the "right divine" was believed in honestly. 
Later when its justice was denied, its benefits were 
seen to be too valuable to be relinquished. So 
duplicity was employed, and the art of "plucking 
the goose without making it squeal" was invented. 

Money-making heretofore has not been so 
much a function of government as money-taking, 
and this function can be made to work one way as 
well as another. 



220 THE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

If thieves by government action can despoil 
honest men, honest men by government action 
can despoil thieves. 

If legislation has been made the instrument of 
crime, it also can be made the instrument of resto- 
ration. No personal temperance, thrift and in- 
dustry can enrich men so long as the power to 
legislate rests in other hands. Labor makes wealth 
but legislation decrees how it shall be divided. 
When the people legislate directly and intelligently 
the division will be in accord with justice. By the 
ballot we can enter upon our inheritance. 

Poverty exists and we are told that it is the 
natural order, with which legislation has nothing 
to do. There has been told no more transparent 
lie. Wealth is created by the union of man's 
labor with nature's gifts. What is it but legisla- 
tion that keeps apart in unnatural divorce these 
two that God hath joined together? What but 
legislation can remove the barriers and allow 
them again to come together? 

Legislation CAN make money; so lavishly that 
no man need want. How? By making con- 
ditions favorable to labor, and securing the 
laborer in the fruit of his toil. 



VOTE YOURSELVES RICH. 221 

WE CAN ACTUALLY VOTE RICHES INTO 
EXISTENCE. 

Our instructors say, '"Government cannot 
legislate a single dollar into existence." Let us 
see. 

While riding to market with a crop of potatoes, 
I am dispossessed. In the struggle a portion of 
the crop is injured. The highwayman, in escap- 
ing, lames the horses by overdriving. Instead of 
going to work the next day, in company with an 
officer, I start in pursuit. The robber, alert, re- 
moves to another state at an expense of half his 
booty. W T hether successful or not, my time, the 
officer's time and the thief's time are all wasted, 
in addition to three-fourths of my product. 

Now, my neighbors and I, who together make 
up the government, suppress brigandage. In- 
stead of three fourths of my crop being wasted by 
struggle for possession, it is all sold the very day 
it is carted to market. Instead of exchanging my 
hoe for a gun and chasing another man, I plant 
another crop of potatoes. Instead of helping me 
in the chase the policeman grows a crop of his 
own, and the bandit, knowing beforehand that it 



222 THE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

is impossible to live by robbery, ceases to watch 
for possible victims and raises his own potatoes 
instead of taking mine. 

Without proper governmental interference the 
three of us have only a portion of one crop of po- 
tatoes between us. AS THE RESULT OF 
GOVERNMENTAL ACTION, WE HAVE 
THREE FULL CROPS. THE GOVERN- 
MENT, BY LEGISLATIVE "EDICT" OR 
"FIAT," if you please, CREATES TWO AND 
THREE-QUARTERS CROPS OF POTA- 
TOES. WE CAN VOTE OURSELVES 
RICH. 

And of each dollar voted into our pockets, not 
more than fifteen cents will be stolen property re- 
claimed. The other eighty-five cents will be a 
new product, rescued from waste or destruction. 

The saddest feature of our present industrial 
cannibalism is that where one dollar is stolen at 
least seven dollars are wasted. THE PRE- 
VENTABLE WASTES OF CIVILIZATION 
CAN MAKE EARTH A PARADISE. 



VOTE YOURSELVES RICE. 2 23 

PROSPERITY, 'THE McKINLEY" AND 
OTHER BRANDS. 
We can vote our country prosperous. But it is 
very essential that we understand clearly WHOM 
we mean when we say "country." We have 
been voting for one kind of prosperity for a long 
time, even before the "McKinley brand/' was on 
the market. Our mistake has been in not asking 
the "Advance Agents" to tell us whose prosperity 
they represented. 

If a burglar is emptying your wife's jewelry 
box, and filling his trousers pockets with the con- 
tents of your safe, prosperity to him means ruin 
to you, and your success means the burglar's 
death. So, in the larger affairs of our nation, the 
kind of prosperity hoped for by the plunderers of 
the people means ruin to their millions of victims, 
while good times for the workers, the farmers, the 
merchants, mean hard times to our desp oilers. 

We now have the best times the world has ever 
seen. Mr. Rockefeller, or Robafellow — one is 
his name, the other ought to be — has an income 
of forty thousand dollars a day, and it is increas- 
ing. No country in the world has ever produced 



224 TEE NEW DEMOCRACY. 

so much; never were tfiere barns so bursting with 
grain, or warehouses so rilled with clothing, fur- 
niture and jewels; never before so many men 
making from five to forty thousand dollars a day. 

This great National Joint Stock Company of 
ours, with its seventy million stockholders, is do- 
ing a thriving business and making barrels of 
money. There is only one objectionable feature. 
It is that after the labor of these seventy millions 
of people, their genius, their suffering and their 
sweat, are converted into wealth, the dividends are 
given to a few hundred men, while the rest of us 
pay the assessments. 

We do not need better times. Anybody who 
wants to make more than forty thousand dollars 
a day is a hog. The real issue is not whether 
we shall have hard times or good times, prosperiiv 
or panic in the abstract, but it is whether that 
prosperity and good times, now monopolized by 
the few, shall become the inheritance of every 
child of God. 

THIEVES TAKE PANIC WHEN PURSUED 
BY HONEST MEN. 

If a select company of burglars and safe-blow- 



VO TE TO UBSEL VES BICH 225 

ers were to enter your village and relieve a num- 
ber of your merchants of the contents of their safes, 
their stocks of jewels, silks and clothing, and were 
to secure all of the finest horses from half the 
neighboring farms, and utilize them in getting 
the booty safely to the nearest forest, they would 
no doubt, while unpacking their wealth and feed- 
ing their horses, after their hasty trip, congratulate 
one another upon "their remarkable prosperity." 
They would be very apt to brag about the un- 
usual "good times." But if, as the sun rose over 
the tree-tops and they were repacking their goods 
they saw suddenly the glistening pitchforks of half 
a hundred angry farmers and the determined furi- 
ous faces of as many brawny workmen and mer- 
chants, bent on reclaiming their property — there 
would be a PANIC. 1 

The plunderers of the world are enjoying good 
times at the expense of the masses. Their profits 
are as fabulous as their methods are cruel. But in 
the midst of their celebration feast, their crime 



i If you want legal evidence to prove the existence of gigantic 
steals and robberies, read Lloyd's "Wealth Against Commonwealth," 
Harper Bros., and the "Seven Financial Conspiracies." 



226 THE NE W DEMO CBA C Y 

is discovered, and the pitchforks of five million 
farmers glistening in the morning sun, the angry 
faces of four million city workmen loom up in the 
distance, and the result is PANIC and loss of 
confidence — (among the revelers.) 

As we approach November, 1900, this panic 
will increase. But as there wells up the sound in- 
fernal of their weeping and wailing and gnashing 
of teeth, there will be heard still louder, the voices 
of millions singing their chorus of deliverance. 
As these offenders look into the grave where lies 
buried their every plan for selfish aggrandize- 
ment, to us, their innumerable victims, that same 
grave will be the open window through which we 
behold the land of promise. 



INDEX. 

Chapter Page 

I, Introductory 5 

II. How to Begin Work 23 

III. Speeches and Meetings - 43 

IV. Methods of Travel 65 
V. Saloon Meetings - - - 101 

VI. The Heroic and Prosaic - - - 115 

VII. Practical Politics - - - 127 

VIII. Fundamentals - 141 

IX. The Church as a Field - - - 151 

X. Only Two Parties in the World 171 

XI. Witnesses for Plutocracy Discredited, 189 

XII. Vote Yourselves Rich - - 211 



The Volunteers' <£ 
Training School For *£ 
Speakers* dt <£ 

Opens at St. Louis 
September 15, 1597. 

Young men of moderate attainments can 
become ready speakers in from one to three 
months time. 

Practice both indoors and outdoors every 
day bv every student, under the direction 
of experienced campaigners. 

All the arts and secrets of successful or- 
atory taught in the most expeditious man- 
ner, accompanied by the daily application 
of every truth learned. 

Tuition per month $1. 

Text books, good for one year, $5. 

Especially Cheap Rates at Volunteers' Boarding House. 

Address Joseph Hoffman Mgr v 

4713 Page Avenue, ST. LOUIS, MO, 

In preparing for this course rea 1 any 

of the following: 

Wealth Against Commonwealth, Henry D. Lloyd, Pub. by Harper Bros. 

Socialism and Social Reform, Prof. Richard T. Ely. 

Social Aspects of Christianity, Prof. Richard T. Ely. 

Ten Men of Money Island, Norton. 

Merrie England, Robert Blatchford. 

Seven Financial Conspiracies. Coin's Financial School. 

The New Democracy, Vrooman. The First Battle, Bryan. 






>'. \ 



